Time management
by pikachu203
Summary: AU. Link thinks he's just a normal kid living in Florida until the day people start to go missing. When Link, Roxas, Terra, Riku, and Sora fall through a temporal portal they find themselves scattered across time with hidden roles to play in an ancient war. Warning: Eventual character death. Terra x Aqua, Sora x Kairi, Link x Zelda. Chapter 6 UP. IN PROGRESS
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1- the silence and the missing**

** Alright, before I start this there is something I have to say. Thank you to everyone who reads my stories, and special thanks to any reviewers! Also, thanks to everyone who favorited and followed the stories or me, you guys rock.**

** There will be some minor OC characters involved, but only to fill places I didn't know how too.**

** This was originally meant to be a ton of shorter chapters, but I decided it was better this way. The rest of the story will continue in this style, so I'm sorry if it takes me at least a week if not two and a half to update on it.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything.**

(**Link's POV**)

Silence. I couldn't give people anything else but silence. Everyone who met me was shocked to learn that and all of my friends never got used to it, even after they knew me. That was the case with them all. No one understood me, but I could handle that. I learned by now how to live with it.

I thought my life would be normal, a fifteen year old kid living in Florida, trying to keep his grades above a C. I couldn't have possibly been more wrong.

It all started _that_ week. The week people started to disappear.

I left home at the same time as always, 6:30, throwing on my favorite green tee-shirt and khaki brown shorts. I picked up a green cap from my nightstand and placed it on my head. My hair was messy but I didn't actually care enough to fix it up. I grabbed my backpack off of by desk chair, making sure no papers were sticking out of the pockets.

I ran downstairs and my mom handed me a piece of slightly burnt toast, which I put in my mouth as I waved to my mom and ran out the door. I pulled the straps of my back pack onto my shoulder and didn't pay much attention to my surroundings, weaving in and out of people making their morning commutes on the sidewalk. I wasn't paying attention to anything until I saw a sign on the telephone pole near the post office. I glanced at it and stopped dead in my tracks.

It read: _Missing Children._

I walked over to the sign and scanned it. Usually those ads were about people who had gone missing years, maybe even decades ago. After one look though, I recognized the two people on the poster. They went to the same school as I did, but I wouldn't exactly call them my friends. I stared at the poster slowly, _Aqua and Ventus… They were friends with that emo guy from the fencing studio._

I stared at it for another moment, it didn't make any sense whatsoever. How had they both vanished in the same night? I read a little farther down and it said they were both last seen with the same person, _Terra…_

I shook off the strange feeling I got in my stomach and continued on my way to school.

When I reached school, everyone was whispering about the missing kids. Some of them were also whispering, or talking rather loudly about him and how he just _had _to be some kind of sociopathic murderer.

I walked over to my locker, trying to ignore the whispers that were no longer about how weird I was. I dug around my messy locker, trying to find my US History book. I moved around crumpled up papers and homework trying to find it when I heard a voice shouting my name, "Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link!"

I sighed silently, _Sora…_

Sora bolted over to me. His brown spiky hair was frizzy, which made me wonder whether or not he'd brushed it that morning, even though the spikes were still mysteriously perfect. Sora was 15, like me. He was wearing a red hoodie with the sleeves cut off and black shorts, his shoes were once again very big, probably hand-me downs from his older brother Cloud, "Link, have you seen Kairi?"

I shook my head, finally managing to pull out my book through a sea of notes. Riku wandered up from behind Sora, "Hey, guys, what's going on?"

Riku was the oldest out of our group of friends as a 16 year old. His silver hair was well-groomed. I still didn't understand why he decided to dye it that color. He was wearing a silver muscle shirt and jeans with white shoes. His turquoise blue eyes gave both of us curious looks, "Well?"

Since I couldn't speak up, Sora did, "We can't find Kairi. We don't know what happened to her."

Riku frowned and crossed his arms, "That's not good. Did you check if anyone saw her today?"

"I bet you the murder boy got her too," a voice said from behind Riku.

Standing behind him was Larxene, little miss perfect homecoming queen of popularity. And man, that girl was a bitch. Larxene was wearing a tiny blue mini-skirt and a small skimpy pink tank top with a razor back. She was somehow making her way around the school in 8 inch pink heels that allowed her to tower over everyone else in the school. She had superfluous amounts of makeup on, to the point where it made her face look like a raccoon with cherry red lips. Larxene crossed her arms over her chest, "You did hear about the missing kids right?"

Riku crossed his arms giving her an equally terrible look, "Who hasn't heard about the missing kids, Larxene."

Larxene continued on snobbily, "You know that Terra kid did it all right?"

Sora crossed his arms, and I did it just for the effect, even though I couldn't join in on the argument, "Larxene, you can't just accuse people of murder. It's not right!"

"Whatever," Larxene muttered, "but I bet you he did murder them. And I bet he killed your little girl friend too, Sora."

Sora's hands clenched into fists and even though he seemed angry on the outside, I could tell he was on the verge of bursting into tears, "N-no. It's not true. You're lying! Kairi… Kairi's going to be fine."

Larxene smirked, "Then explain why her name is with the other two on the wall."

I glanced up and sure as she said, there it was on the wall, along with the other two kids. My heart sank. Despite how bitchy and dishonest Larxene was, from what everyone knew, she was telling the truth. Somewhat. She laughed, "I think they should kill the kid before it's one of you next."

I frowned and stared daggers at her, thinking of all of the awful things I would say to her if I could actually talk. Sora was despondent and Riku had his arms crossed across his chest. Larxene smirked and waltzed down the hall in her ultra-high heels and her back retreated into the crowd of people; all of them whispering the same tale, all talking about the missing or the murdered or both.

(**Riku's POV**)

After school ended, Link, Sora and I walked up behind Terra, who must have realized we were coming up behind him because he slammed his locker shut and growled, "Are you here to interrogate me like the others? Or are you just here to mock me like the asshole I am?"

We were silent.

Terra was always different. In a town of pure hearted Christian perfectionists, he was the delinquent, the Goth, the outsider and now, the murderer. He stood out like a black wolf in a flock of pure white sheep. He was 19 years old, and had brown hair that spiked and went down to his shoulders. He was wearing a dark gray tee shirt and a black leather jacket. His dark jeans had several chains going across them. He had a pair of tall black boots on and under one was a small bump which might have been an ankle tracker. I frowned, "Terra do you know what happened to the missing people?"

Terra punched his locker and then turned to us, and we realized he had dark circles under his eyes, he hadn't slept at all last night. He sighed, "I don't know. All I know is that I saw them last."

I frowned and Sora asked, "Then why wouldn't they arrest you?"

Link and I elbowed him in a manner that clearly said, "SHUT UP!"

Terra turned away from us, "They did. They let me out with a tracker when they realized I didn't know anything."

I frowned, "I'm sorry about your friends."

"You mean you're sorry about my brother and my girlfriend who everyone thinks I murdered?"

I froze, I didn't know anything about him and I almost felt like I was interrogating him, "I'm sorry."

Terra picked up his back pack off the ground, "You shouldn't be. I'm going to find them. I don't care how long it takes or what the police try to do to me."

I nodded, "I was only asking because our friend Kairi disappeared. We need to find her and we were hoping you might know something."

Terra flung his back pack over his shoulders, "Well, I don't know anything, okay? Stop interrogating me."

He started to walk away when Sora's voice quietly cut the air, "You didn't do anything did you?"

Terra froze in his tracks, not bothering to turn around, "Really? What gave that away?"

Sora once again said softly, "I know how you feel. Imagine how I feel about Kairi going missing. I was hoping you could help us."

"Well, I can't," he replied shortly, walking away, ignoring everyone's whispers and glares.

The three of us gathered into a small huddle, "Well he wasn't helpful at all."

"I think he was just sad," Sora replied softly.

"Well you certainly didn't help," I muttered.

"Riku! Stop being so insensitive," Sora whispered.

I growled, "Focus on the real problem here, Sora, Kairi!"

"We aren't the only ones who are in pain," Sora complained annoyingly.

Link stepped in between us and pushed us away from one another, giving us both looks that clearly said, _Stop it you two._

I sighed, "Link's right, Sora, we should be looking for Kairi, not arguing about this."

Link nodded curtly, but Sora crossed his arms, giving us the, _I'm not going to move until you say yes _eyes.

I growled, "Just no, Sora. Maybe if we knew more about him I'd say yes."

"What about Ven and Aqua then," Sora asked quietly.

I froze thinking about those two for a moment before shaking my head, "Sora, it's not a good idea to get involved with this, and until his case clears up, I don't think it's a good idea to get involved with him."

"But-"

"No, Sora! Look, he seems innocent, really, but there's only one suspect and that's him," I continued, annoyed, "What happens if he did kill them, huh? What happens then? What hope would we have of finding Kairi if we help him?"

I hadn't realized how loud I was or how harsh I was because Sora was crying at the end of my speech. He whispered, "Riku, you insensitive jerk," and ran off towards the nearest bathroom.

_I swear sometimes he can be such a-_ I shook off that thought and glanced at Link, who I'd almost forgotten was even there, "Link, I got to go talk to Sora. You should go home. Oh, and be careful. I don't want to be looking for you too."

Link wrote a small note down on a piece of paper, _See, Riku? This is why you don't have a girlfriend._

"Oh shut up…"

I weaved my way through the crowd of people and quickly made my way to the bathroom where Sora was crying openly over one of the sinks. He didn't look up when I came up next to him. I would've comforted him if not for the fact that this place was usually teeming with bullies and druggies and no doubt the next top story would be how we were gay for one another. Some people are just so crazy, aren't they?

"Sora…"

"Kairi," he whispered and went back to crying.

I sighed, "Hey. We can find her. I don't care if we're up all night for the next year searching. Heck I don't care how long I have to look. I would give up everything to see her again, and I know that you would too."

He nodded, "Now stop crying."

Sora nodded and made it half way through a turn before freezing in his tracks, "Riku…"

I turned around and my eyes widened, "What the heck is that."

In front of one of the stalls was a sparkling blue light and there were small firework-like bursts popping around it and it almost seemed to pulse, like a heart?

I jokingly said, "Well, I knew someone was smoking something funny in here…"

Sora walked forward, "Don't you hear it Riku?"

"Hear what," I asked, worried about Sora's mind.

"That voice. There's a girl… she's calling to me," Sora said, walking closer to the light.

"Okay, Sora, just stay away from it!"

He ignored me, as always, and went to the light, touching it. His body started to shine and fade and he shouted in fear, "Riku!"

He vanished into thin air, "Sora?"

The light started to fade and I ran straight into it before it vanished and disappeared, like Sora did.

The light vanished behind me and the two of us were gone, without a trace.

(**Link's POV**)

I walked past my house after school and straight over to where Terra lived. I knew that look I'd seen in his eyes. The desperate look of someone who knows they're telling the truth even though everyone else couldn't listen. He couldn't get arrested for this. He couldn't be killed for this. It just wasn't right.

I walked to his house. It was normal really, a two story colonial style house with a white-washed fence and a well cut lawn. There was a small cobblestone walkway that went from the sidewalk to the covered front porch. I walked along it and slowly rang the doorbell, causing a light buzzing sound to hit the air.

A man opened the door, someone who I didn't recognize. He had black slightly long hair that was pulled up in a messy little top-not. His eyes were tired and had dark circles around them, which was understandable as one of his sons was being tried for murder and the other one was missing, "Yes?"

I had brought a small note pad with me, and I quickly wrote on it, _I'm here to see Terra._

He frowned and opened the door, "I'm sorry, he isn't home right now. He's being questioned about that Kairi girl, though you're welcome to come in."

I entered the house, which once again seemed perfectly normal on the inside. I slowly wrote on the paper, _I'm sorry for being blunt. I'm Link. Who are you?_

He read the paper evenly, "I'm Terra's guardian. Just call me Eraqus."

I nodded, but I was quietly wondering, _why didn't Terra have real parents? I guess I shouldn't be encroaching on his privacy…_

Eraqus walked over to the stairs, "Roxas! We have a visitor, make sure you're decent!"

The two of us stood at the bottom of the stairs and waited for Roxas to come down. It took him about five minutes and his jacket was only half on when he came down. Roxas and Ventus were identical down to the spikes on their hair. Roxas's normally blonde spiky hair was matted down and brown because he'd just come out of the shower. The fly on his dark blue boot cut jeans was down and his black and white checkered converse sneakers that matched one side of his jacket. The side of his jacket that wasn't black and white was pure black. He had a long chain necklace with a small four-pointed star pendant on it. He looked to be about 13 years old. Something told me that his clothes were hand me downs from his brother. "Dad, who is this?"

"This is Link," Eraqus replied, "He's a friend of your brothers."

Roxas examined me, but there was nothing spiteful in his eyes, only curiosity, "Alright. Dad, can I go bring Terra home?"

Eraqus sighed, "I'm sorry, Roxas, but the police won't let your brother go unless they are certain he's not guilty."

"But he isn't guilty," Roxas complained, "Terra would never hurt Ven or Aqua or that Kairi girl."

Eraqus nodded, "I know he wouldn't, but they won't believe him. He's their only suspect at the moment, and you know how Terra is when he's impatient-"

Roxas cut him off, "He's my brother and they won't hurt him! I don't care!"

I quickly wrote, _I'll go with him._

Eraqus and Roxas read the paper, and Eraqus replied, "Fine. Just come back safe. I can't guarantee they'll let him come home with you though."

Roxas smiled and hugged me, jumping up and down, "Thank you, thank you, thank you! C'mon Link, let's go get Terra."

I nodded and thought, _how are Terra and Roxas brothers? They're not alike at all…_

Roxas rode his skateboard to the station and I had to run to keep up with him because he was going so fast. When we got there the man behind the counter seemed to recognize him, "Hello, Roxas."

"Hello, Officer Johnston," Roxas replied easily.

The officer smiled. He was a tall Indian man who had well-kept hair, and kept a smile on his face even in the most trying of circumstances, "You're brother is currently in questioning."

Roxas did his best to look adorable, which didn't take a lot of effort, "Please, officer, can we at least see him? I feel like I'm losing both of my brothers at once."

The officer smiled again, though his eyes looked sad, "Sure, you can go watch it."

He led the two of us to a glass window that viewed the questioning room, where a negotiator was deep in her interrogation.

(**Terra's POV**)

The negotiator stared at me long and hard across the table. I was cuffed to the chair behind me, but I was fine, I'd been in this position before, the evening when my world fell apart. "Now, tell me," she placed a picture of a red haired girl on the table in front of me, "Have you ever seen this girl before?"

I looked at her long and hard and remembered what I'd learned before when I'd come here, _tell the truth. Tell the truth enough times and they'll know you're not lying._

I looked up at her calmly, "I've seen her before, but I've never spoken to her. I think she's that Sora kid's girl."

The negotiator nodded at me. She had short brown hair and green eyes. She was very short, but her words cut sharper than knives. Her nametag, displayed proudly on her dark blue uniform, Officer Sofie. Sofie leaned over the table, so her eyes could stare directly into mine, "You've never spoken to her?"

_Here they go again … Ask the same question a million times and see if I can answer it verbatim every time…_ "Never."

Sofie nodded, though she was really thinking, _It has to be him. It just has to be. There's no way it's not. Let's try…_

She continued on, "I heard you broke a man's arm once, tell me about that."

I slowly said, "Ma'am. There is no connection between that case and my current case. Even if there were any charges made, they were against him not me."

"I'm curious now," Sofie said, "Tell me, what happened then."

I swallowed hard, "He… he tried to rape Aqua."

"Who is Aqua sweetie," she asked again, confusing me, "your friend?"

"Aqua's my girlfriend," I said slowly, "I just protected her."

Sofie smiled at me, I'd never been through a negotiation like this, "I'm sure you must love her very much then."

I nodded slowly, "Always."

Her disposition suddenly changed, "Tell me, did you two ever argue?"

_So that's what she's trying to do… Find my motives indirectly. Right. You want to break my heart, then I'll break yours._ I shook my head, "I never was angry with her. She was one of the only people who ever cared about me. The only person who ever understood me."

I saw something sparkle at the edge of Sofie's eye, and I knew that I was winning. She decided to quickly change tactics, "So. I want to understand you better, Terra. You live with your father?"

"No," I replied evenly, "I live with my guardian."

"Oh really," she asked, "Why not your parents?"

_She's really trying to make me guilty, isn't she?_ "My father was abusive to me. My teacher adopted us."

"I see, and did that abuse ever do anything to you," she asked.

"No," I replied.

"I have one more question," Sofie said softly, though I could tell I was slowly breaking her heart, "Have you ever been masochistic in anyway?"

I slowly admitted, "Yes, I used to be. I used to cut my wrists very often."

She frowned, "What made you stop?"

"Aqua," I said softly, "Aqua brought me back. She was the angel that brought me out of darkness. She found me trying to bleed myself out through my wrists once and she saved me. (1)"

She started to tear up a little, "Are you… Are you looking for her?"

I nodded, "I will always look for her until she's back in my arms."

She was sniffing and crying and she knelt down next to me and hugged me, "I'm so sorry. You're innocent, I'm sorry."

_Wow, my life story broke a police negotiator. That's pathetic._

The police officer who brought me there opened the door, "Officer Sofie?"

"Let him out," she said, her voice breaking, "He's innocent, let the poor boy go."

The man nodded, releasing my scarred wrists from the shackles and letting me out of the room where my brother Roxas and , to my surprise, one of the boys who was interrogating me earlier, Link.

(**Roxas's POV**)

As soon as my brother left the room I hugged him really, really tightly, "Terra!"

He smiled and hugged me, "Hey little bro. Did you bring your friend with you?"

I shook my head, "I thought that he was your friend."

Terra turned toward Link, "What are you doing here?"

Link started to write very quickly on his paper and it read, _I came to help you, but if I help you, you need to help me._

I came to a realization. Link was a good kid. A really good kid, even though he couldn't talk, but he just wanted his friend back. He wanted it more than anything to find Kairi, and that was it. I understood it now, and I could sympathize with him. I wanted my brother back too.

I frowned, "Is that the only reason you came?"

He quickly wrote on the paper, _No, I came to help._

I nodded, "Come on, let's go home, dad's all worried."

Terra smiled at me and messed up my hair, making me smile back, "Everything will be fine, Roxas. This will all work out, and everything will go back to normal."

The three of us quietly left. I knew Terra was trying to be comforting, but I also knew he was lying. More than likely Ven was… no… No he couldn't be. He wasn't dead, I wouldn't accept that.

We walked down the street, and everything was silent, because no one had anything to say. That was until we saw a glow a few blocks down. I assumed at first that it was a flashlight, but as we got closer to it, I realized I was wrong.

No, it wasn't a flash light; it was a pure silver light, hovering above the side walk. The three of us froze and suddenly Link and my brother looked like they were listening to someone's voice. Link stepped forward and his body flashed several times before vanishing.

I gasped, "What?"

_What just happened? Where did he go!?_

I stared at Terra frantically, though he seemed entranced with the light, as if it had cast a spell on him, "Terra? Terra, snap out of it!"

Terra didn't even blink, he just said, "Roxas, can't you hear her," and took a step forward towards the mysterious light.

"What the hell are you talking about, Terra," I asked.

Terra walked forward again, his steps were slow, as if he was trying to decipher whether or not he should be walking into the light, "Aqua."

"Terra, Aqua's gone," I said, starting to worry if he was hallucinating.

Terra shook his head, and stretched out his hand, his fingertips hitting the light force, "No. She's right here."

His body flashed several times and disappeared. I gasped and looked around, no one. The light was quickly fading from its position on the street and I bolted into it before it could vanish completely, not caring where it took me. I just didn't want to lose the only family I had left.

I felt myself fall through the light and realized that I was quite literally diving through the sky. I tried to control myself on my rapid descent to destruction, but my eyes… They were… so heavy.

I blinked long and hard and lost consciousness as I fell from the night.

**Well then, that didn't take me all of September to write, honestly, I've just been jumping around and writing random sections of this. I'm not a linear thinker, I write when I get ideas.**

** Also, if you're going to flame the story, don't review and if you don't like it don't read it. The next chapter will (hopefully) be up next week, school allowing…**

**-Pikachu 203**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2- Where are we?**

** I am so sorry for forgetting, but I put a (1) after one of Terra's statements during his interrogation, is because it was a reference to my other story "Teen Angst". I'm really, really sorry about that.**

** Also, I'm sorry if this is bad… I worked hard on it, but I hardly had any time to work on it and I was sort of half asleep while writing it. If it is, I promise to make the next chapter a lot better, there's just a ton of explanation in this chapter.**

** I'll be posting new stuff every **

(**Link's POV)**

I blinked my eyes open to hear voices I didn't recognize, "Who do you suppose he is?"

Another voice replied, "I'm not sure. He has the triforce on his hand though."

"What if he's one of Ganon's men? Like the other boy," I heard a slapping sound and someone groaned.

"We don't know if he's one of Ganon's men, Mako," the other voice replied, "Stop hitting him."

I closed my eyes again, listening to them carefully, "Alright, if they aren't just Lord Ganondorf's flunkies then explain their clothing."

"I'm sure they'd explain if you just let him talk, Mako," the second voice said again.

I blinked my eyes open to see two young people arguing with one another. I sat up abruptly, only to find that my hands and feet were bound tightly. I gazed up in confusion and met Terra's dark blue eyes. He had several bruises forming on his face, including a very large one across his left cheek. "Look, Mako, he's awake," one of the two people said quickly.

Mako had dark brown eyes and salt and peppering hair. He had a large black bushy mustache that was also going gray at the tips. The other younger person had bright blue eyes and brown hair that was messy and stuck up in different places. That wasn't the weird part though. The weird part was how they dressed.

They both were wearing clothing that would've better been seen on someone at a Renaissance convention. Their clothing was tattered and dirty and judging by the worn colors, it had been washed thousands of times. Mako turned on me angrily, holding a long sword up to my neck, "Now boy, tell us who you are."

I cringed at the blade as it pricked into the skin of my neck, and for once I really wished I wasn't a mute so I could tell them I was helpless and ask what the hell was going on. Terra stopped him, "He can't talk…"

Mako turned and quickly slashed through one of Terra's cheeks, but Terra ignored him and kept talking, "Link's a mute. He can't talk to you."

Mako turned his sword so it tapped Terra's neck, "Alright… Now explain the device on your ankle."

Terra and I both looked down at his ankle, "Hmm? That's a police tracker. I'm sure you've at least heard of them, right?"

Mako and the younger person shared glances, and the younger one asked, "What's a 'police'?"

Terra directed his attention at me rather than these crazy people, "Yo, Link," I took my eyes off of the crazy dude, "I have a feeling that we're not in Florida anymore."

_Really Terra, what gave that away, the swords, the clothing, the people who don't know what the police are?_

I racked my brain for an answer to this problem. I just needed an answer that made sense. I kept on searching for one, but there really weren't any. This didn't make any sense. At all.

Terra sighed, "You know, police, law enforcement. They drive a car around with flashing sirens," the two people gave Terra blank stares, "They have a television show, Cops. They wear blue? Bad boys," still no recognition, "Yeah, I got nothing."

I sighed, _this is not going to end well…_

The younger one looked up at Mako, "Dad, I think he might just be insane."

"No, that has to be code for something," Mako replied quickly.

"Excuse me," Terra cut off their argument, "I can hear you, you know."

Mako froze, "So you call that thing a 'tracker'?"

"Umm…. yep…"

_We're trapped in a house with a conspiracy theorist and a little kid… We're going to die…_

Mako frowned, staring at it for a moment, "We should take it to the princess, she'll know what it is"

"Dude," Terra stopped him from trying to take it off, "It won't come off without the key."

"Do you have the key?"

"If I had the key this bulky thing would've been off my leg by now," Terra replied nonchalantly.

"Alright," Mako muttered, moving his sword, "I guess I'll have to cut it off."

"It's made of steel," Terra replied lightly, "It won't come off."

"That's not what I had in mind," Mako said maliciously.

My eyes widened and I opened my mouth in a silent scream, _No!_

The sword quickly started to fall but there was a loud clanging sound and the sword dropped out of Mako's hand. Terra quickly jumped up and ran over to me and I realized he was holding a bloody switch knife. Mako was holding his now bleeding hand and staring up at him in horror, "An assassin's knife?"

Terra quickly slashed through the ropes on my wrists and ankles and pulled me up, "Come on, let's get out of here."

_What just happened, _I wondered frantically, _and why am I trusting someone who carries around a switch knife in his back pocket? Why does Terra even have a switch knife?_ He groaned at my unresponsiveness and grabbed my left wrist, pulling me out of the house and into the street.

The streets in the town weren't actually streets at all. They were made of cobblestones which were rough and worn down. The streets were full of people in raggedy clothing wandering about, holding baskets of food above their heads or in their hands. The streets were full of traders who had set up tables selling everything from bread to spices to silk scarves with pastel colors. There were several merchant carts stopped on the road, complete with sets of horses. There were animals running around in the road, ranging from cats and dogs to chickens and donkeys. The entire place smelled like a cross between a farmer's market and a farm itself.

Terra was gripping my hand tightly, weaving his way through the crowd of people and we were trying to fit in with the crowd of people in the streets and hide from the others. Terra closed his knife and slid it into his back pocket again, "Well, this is confusing."

I nodded in reply. "Where do you think we are," Terra asked quickly.

I couldn't answer and even if I could I would've said that I didn't know. A woman from behind one of the stands spoke up, "Are you two travelers?"

Terra walked over to the stand, pulling me with him and probably seeing this as a good opportunity to get some information, "You could say that, yes."

The woman was young, she looked to be in her twenties and had light silver hair with several blue streaks. She had crystal blue eyes and pale skin which had a silver tint, "This is the castle city in the middle of the country of Hyrule."

_They call __this__ a city? Where is this Hyrule place anyway? Oh why didn't I pay more attention in Geography?_ The young woman smiled politely, "My name is Ruto."

Terra nodded gently taking up the young woman's hand and kissing it, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Ruto. My name is Terra."

I could hardly believe my eyes. He was being _polite?_ Terra's never polite. EVER. I guess I must've been staring blankly ahead because I hardly noticed it when Ruto asked, "And you are?"

I blinked out of my trance, _what do I do? I can't say anything!_ Terra replied for me, "This is my cousin Link."

"Well," Ruto said lightly, "It's a pleasure to meet you too, Link."

"I'm sorry," Terra replied calmly before whispering loudly, "He's a bit daft."

_Daft? Daft!? When the hell did you get smart you jerk?! If we ever get out of this, you are going to get it so bad…_

Ruto giggled lightly, "So what brings you two to the city?"

"We were looking for some friends of ours," Terra replied easily, staring directly into Ruto's blue eyes, "We were hoping to find them in the city."

Ruto nodded, "Hyrule is supposed to be the city where you can find lost things. I'm sure you'll find your friends here."

"I know this is going to sound insane," Terra said, "but what year is it?"

"It's 1490," Ruto replied curiously, "Why?"

_It's what? No, no that's not possible! How did we even get here? America hasn't even been discovered yet!_

"Thank you," Terra said quietly in response.

A loud shout cut the air and the two of us glanced up, noticing Mako out in the street pointing towards us and shouting for help. Terra frowned, "Sorry, Miss Ruto, I have to go!"

He grabbed my hand and started to run through the crowd. _What's going on?!_

"Not sure," Terra replied to my _thought._

_Wait, what? Are you reading my mind!?_

"Pretty much, Link," Terra replied, swerving in between the people as we ran away from whoever was following us.

_Ah! What the fuck?_

Terra and I ran into an alleyway and the two of us were caught in a net that flew up to n the rafters of the nearest building. Terra sighed, "Well, shit."

I struggled in the tangles of the net, and as I did I heard heavy footsteps running up to us. Mako was smirking widely from ear to ear and was surrounded by guards in armor pointing spears at us, "That's them."

One of the guards poked Terra in the chest with his spear, "Drop your weapon!"

Terra ignored him, he was trying to futilely free himself from the net with his switch knife. The guard hit him harder with it, "Okay, okay, I'm putting it down, you crazy ass hole."

He dropped the knife, and it fell, clattering to the cobblestones below, and the guards stared at it for a moment, a strange device unlike anything they had ever seen before. One of them poked it with the bottom of his lance, as if he was nervous that it was going to come to life and attack him or something. He then picked it up and flipped it in and out, playing with it for a moment before saying, "harmless", and giving it back to Terra.

The group of guards dragged us through the town of people and at one point I heard Mako and Ruto arguing behind us, "But what did they do?"

"What should you care? Know your place, woman," Mako shouted back at her.

Ruto burst through the group of guards, ran up to us and pressed something into Terra's hand through the net, before getting pulled back by the guards, "Stop it! Let them go!"

If they actually heard her, they ignored her. I don't know what happened to Ruto after that. I never actually say her again.

After the small pit-stop, they continued to drag the two of us across the cobblestone road to the castle. It was the most uncomfortable experience I've ever had, but judging by the calm look on Terra's face, he'd been through a lot more. The cobblestones beneath me turned into the smooth marble of the castle floors, than the smooth marble transformed into the rough stone of the dungeon floor, and then the net was released and we stumbled into a cell. I frowned, _Okay, what the fuck is going on? How did we even get here? Is that a rat?_

"Calm down," Terra muttered, putting his switch knife back in his pocket, "I have no idea what the fuck is going on or how we got here. Yes that's a rat. Are you immune to the plague?"

_Um… no?_

"Then stay away from the rat," Terra muttered.

He sat down on the rotting wooden bench in the room. The cell itself was dark, so dark that I could hardly tell what the shadowy black figures in the room were. I could hear tortured screaming from down the long hallway outside, and I feared what was happening to the people who were screaming.

There were rats scurrying in and out of the walls and across the floor. My eyes started tracing their rapid, irregular movements across the floor. So small, but they were fast, mean, deadly and they bit.

I noticed Terra was opening something in his hands, and realized that it was the object Ruto had pressed into his hands, _what is it?_

Terra held up the tiny vial to the air and it seemed like it was reflecting tiny non-existent beams of light, "It's a vial of water."

I looked at him curiously, _why would she give that to us?_

Terra had unrolled it from what it had been wrapped in, "It's a note, and I'll try to read it…"

I sat down next to him and strained my eyes trying to read it, but he expertly read it out loud, "To Sir Terra and his 'daft' little cousin."

_Hey!_

Terra continued without a second thought, "This vial is filled from water from the water shrine. It's said to heal any injury, and I think you two should have it. It's been passed down through my family for nearly a thousand years, and apparently it was given to us by the water sage nearly a thousand years ago. I don't know who he is, though, and as a girl I do not have an incredible freedom to travel. You two may have a better chance of finding him and giving this to him. She said…

She said there would come a time when he would understand why she gave it to him.

A great darkness is overtaking our world, similar to the events in 490 that killed the sage of shadows…

I'm sorry, but we need your help. I can see you two have been through a lot, but I'm sure you'll find your friends and return home safety.

Love always, Princess Ruto," Terra stopped reading for a moment, "Who are these sages she's talking about?"

_I have no idea. By the way… you were totally flirting with that princess Ruto chick!_ I thought.

"Oh shut up," Terra muttered, "I like blue haired chicks…"

_Unlike you, Terra, I don't have the joy of shutting off my thoughts._

Terra handed me the vial of water, "Here, this might come in handy, especially if that rat bites you."

_What?! You jerk!_

Terra laughed.

Suddenly a bright lurid torchlight filled the room and I heard a surprisingly familiar voice shout, "Link!"

I looked towards the door in surprise, _Kairi?_

"Kairi," Terra said.

(**Kairi's POV**)

(A little earlier)

I was starting to think this wasn't a dream.

I hardly understood what was going on. I had apparently been declared some kind of princess out of the blue and I was more confused than ever. I was currently sitting in a throne room in the middle of the castle toying with the pointy diamond encrusted tiara that had been uncomfortably forced onto my head.

As a little girl I'd always dreamed of being a princess, but I'd never expected to be chucked into it like this. I was sitting on the shining golden throne and trying to make myself comfortable, but that was nearly impossible because it was pure metal and had no cushions.

The throne room itself was at least 300 feet long and had two golden thrones near the back, the shorter one for me and the taller one for my sister. Behind the thrones a two story glass window with a balcony which provided a panoramic view of the forests beyond Hyrule and stretched to the ceiling of the room. The walls were made of smooth brown stone and columns pressed into them supported the high, tiled ceiling. The mosaic tile on the ceiling was a depiction of the temple of time, made of trillions of tiny shining ceramic tiles which had been expertly pressed together. The floor was made of white marble, though swirling patterns of gold had been cut into the stone, which seamlessly fit together across the floor. There was a chandelier that hung from the ceiling which looked like a crystal exploded and it had been trapped with the glorious shards sticking out of it at all angles; the light played off of the tips of the crystal and shed tiny beams of rainbow light around the room.

I relaxed in the throne, trying to breathe. My scarlet dress had a thin skirt and fuchsia lacing going down the sides. It had a corset that was too tight to me and cut off my ability to breathe, which was painful and annoying. It was even more painful and annoying then the high heels I'd worn for freshman semi-formal. I leaned back in the chair trying to remember how I got here and what was going on.

(**flashback**)

_I couldn't remember how I got there, all I could remember was waking up in my room and seeing a weird light, hearing an unfamiliar female voice and vanishing. I felt myself lying on the marble floor of the throne room and wondered where I was. I pulled myself up, my head spinning, trying to figure out where I was, and why I wasn't in my bed room. I rubbed my aching head and looked up to meet a pair of blue eyes._

_ There was a girl looking at me. She had light blue eyes and brown hair with several pink ribbons weaved into it. Her hair was long and straight and her small, pointed ears poked out from between her long bangs and her longer hair. A light golden tiara with a small pink diamond set in the center of the laced metal was lopsided on her head. She had on a pure white long dress with purple lacing and purple sparkles sewn into the bodice of the dress. The dress had a long slit going from her waist down her left led which revealed her long white tights and high heeled knee high white boots. She smiled, "Hello, Kairi, it's a pleasure to meet you after all of this time."_

_ I blinked in surprise, trying to figure out where I was and what was going on, "Where am I? Who are you?"_

_ She just smiled and nodded, "My name is Zelda. Princess Zelda."_

_ I felt myself stumble into a curtsy trying to remember how to act around royalty. At this point I just thought it was all a lucid dream and I should just play along with it and everything would be alright, "I-I'm so sorry your highness."_

_ She shook her head, "It's fine, Princess Kairi, and I'm sorry if this is confusing for you. You are currently in Hyrule city, in the year 1490."_

_ My head nearly exploded on the spot, and I fell back to my knees trying to process the information and pick the simplest thing to ask about first, but all three things in that last statement were so confusing that I had to choose a single one to ask, "P-princess?"_

_ Zelda laughed lightly, "Funny that you would start there."_

_ I was trembling and shaking my head and trying to figure out what was going on and if I was still dreaming, "Explain what's going on. Please."_

_ Zelda nodded politely and pointed towards the ceiling, "In a nutshell, you're a princess of heart. Hyrule is a city that used to exist about 40 miles out of London and you seem to have fallen through a temporal portal."_

_ "I fell through a what," I asked, pinching my arms lightly to see if I could feel the pain._

_ "A temporal portal is basically a crack in the time line that allows you to travel to a set date in history or in the future. Do you understand what I'm saying?"_

_ I decided to play along with it, "um… Sure."_

_ "I think I should leave the explanations for when the other two get here," Zelda replied easily, "Until then you should try to relax and get a hold on your situation."_

_ I nodded. What else could I do then assume this was just some big dream, right? I mean… It was too ridiculous to be real._

(End Flashback)

I once again tried to relax. I kept on telling myself the same thing over and over:

_It's just a dream._

_It's just a dream._

_It's just a dream…_

_It's just a… who am I kidding!?_

This couldn't be a dream. Dreams weren't this long, right?

I shook it off and repeated the chant in my head, though the more I repeated the notion, the less I believed it.

_It's not a dream._

But… If it wasn't a dream, where were Sora, Riku, and Link? Had they fallen through the same portal as I did or were they still in 2011? Was time passing back home, and if so, did anyone notice my disappearance? Why was I there? Why wouldn't anyone explain anything to me? I kept on asking myself thousands of questions that needed answers in my mind.

Ugh. This was all too confusing… I just wanted to be back home where things made sense and everything was normal.

I didn't even notice when a young guard opened the door and ran up to the throne, bowing respectfully as usual, "Princess, we have some prisoners who you need to see."

That got me up. I quickly stood up, ignoring the lack of air in my lungs from my tight outfit, "Take me to them!"

He nodded, though I think the poor little guy was a little bit shocked at my enthusiasm to see prisoners. He walked me through the marble halls and to the dank, rotting wooden staircase which led down to the dungeons. I followed him slowly, watching as rodents scurried around beneath me. _When was the last time they cleaned this place? This is disgusting…_

The man led me down the rickety staircase, lighting a small torch on his way, as it was pitch black in the corridor bellow us. It was hideous down there. Tortured screams escaped a room I never wanted to see the inside of, and filthy criminals pressed their faces against the dusty bars of their cells, reaching for the light as if they hadn't seen it in years.

Beyond the dim glow of the fire though, there was pure darkness. In fact, I don't think I'd ever seen darkness that black before. It wasn't like on cloudy evenings where everything was painted dark gray and cobalt, it was pure black. The walls of the dungeon, as well as the floors were all made of cobblestones that were worn, and in some places had cracks which vermin used to escape their abodes and spread plague among the prisoners. The entire place smelled like a cross between detritus and rotting human flesh.

We walked nearly to the end of the long corridor and there was a single cell there. The torchlight gave a lurid glow to the inhabitants of it. Link and Terra were seated on an old moldy wooden bench which was jutting out of the wall. Link looked up and smiled and Terra calmly said, "Kairi."

I was happy to see my friend there. I didn't know Terra personally, but I knew his girlfriend, Aqua. She used to tutor me in math until eighth grade and I was still friends with her. She was really nice, so I always assumed that her boyfriend would be a good guy.

I grabbed at the bars, staring at the two of them more closely; Link looked fine, but Terra looked like someone had beat the crud out of him then smashed his face in, "Link! Terra! Are you okay?"

Link shrugged and Terra replied, "I feel like crap."

_Well, that was… to the point…_

I looked over at the guard, concerned, "Let them out!"

"But ma'am they," he started.

I cut him off sharply, "Let my friends out!"

He nodded, fumbling with his keys in the darkness before managing to get them out and unlocking the door. Terra and Link exited and Terra sighed, "Thanks, Kairi, but do you know what's going on here?"

"No I don't," I said before moving onto a more apparent problem in my eyes, "What happened to your face?"

Terra touched the bruises on his face and then chuckled, "Oh these? You should see the other guy."

Terra and Link laughed lightly and I asked, "How did you get here?"

"I have no idea," Terra replied.

I frowned, "Well there has to be someone who can help us."

"Excuse me your majesty…"

A light voice came up from behind us. I looked up to see a girl wearing a black cloak at the edge of my vision in the torchlight, "Princess Zelda wishes to see all of you."

I nodded, "Thank you."

The girl said nothing, she just ran back off down the corridor, vanishing as suddenly as she had come. I looked up, "I guess that's our call."

I gestured for the two boys to follow me. Link eagerly obliged to my request, but Terra was slower as he joined us in our ascent. It almost felt like…

It almost felt like he was thinking about something.

(**Terra's POV**)

Kairi led Link and I up the stairs and to the throne room and while she was excited and happy to see Link, and didn't mind my presence, the guards of the castle were still wary of both of us. I glanced at one of them and he pointed his spear at me, trembling. I shrugged and kept moving with the group.

We wandered around the castle, which while it had many twists and turns, was relatively linear. I wandered behind Kairi, a little curious about her, "So how do you know Kairi?"

Link shrugged and once again I had the strange sensation of his thoughts being pressed into my ears and the words he wanted to say flashing in front of my eyes. _She's Sora and Riku's friend. I only know her because of them. She's taken, so don't go flirting with her!_

I chuckled, "I see… Well, I'm taken too so don't go accusing me of anything."

Everyone other than Link, who was slowly getting used to my telekinesis with him, stared at me in confusion. A voice from behind us said, "Well, well, well the companion is already showing his true colors."

I blinked in surprise. There, standing behind us was Princess Zelda and another girl. At the time I didn't know either of them but I was more concentrated on the girl who was with her. She wore a long black cloak which covered her head, hiding her form and face and for some mysterious reason, her bright blue eye were the only truly visible part of her face. The two of us met eyes for a pure moment before she turned away quickly. _Who… who are you?_

Zelda was the first to speak, "So… the companion has already revealed himself to us."

I blinked in surprise;_ who has a what now?_ "Who are you? What's going on here?"

One of the guards hit me in the back of the head, hard, "Do not speak to the princess in such a disrespectful way!"

I fell on my knees from the force of the armored man's blow and suddenly I felt something unexpected, a jolt. I stared down in surprise, _Oh God… Not now…_ I felt another long jolt, this one sharper than the last one. I released a shout of pain, now the electricity wasn't coming in short bursts; it was continuous all of the pain emanating from my ankle, the tracker. How was this even possible? No one was here that could control it and send the electricity through it. The others gathered around watching as small bursts of electricity started to spark and course through my body. Link knelt down curiously, _Are you okay?_

At this point the pain was spreading and it was so sharp that I wished that Mako had just cut off my foot earlier, that pain would be nothing compared to this. I closed my eyes and managed to say, "T-the… the tracker…"

The others probably had no idea what was going on or what was doing this to me. I shouted again as another long wave of electricity started, pain going through me. Then suddenly it stopped. I blinked for a moment, looking up to see the girl in the cloak standing by my feet, rubbing the spot where the tracker had been gently. The tracker had been shorted out and the device was lying in broken pieces on the ground, sparking faintly.

The girl gently put my foot back on the ground and I stared up at her, "T-thank you."

"Are you okay," Kairi asked frantically, helping me up.

I nodded, dazed, but stood up normally, "Fine."

I glanced up at Zelda, "Who are you?"

"My name is princess Zelda," Zelda replied easily and everyone around me bowed or curtsied respectfully except for me.

I frowned, "Alright princess, would you care to explain what the hell is going on, because last night I was in a normal town in Florida in 2012, and now I'm stuck in a feudal castle in 1490."

Zelda glared at us and Link shivered, _that is one scary beautiful chick._

I chuckled at him, "You kill me over getting information out of a girl on the street while you're having naughty thoughts about the princess!"

Link gave me a wide-eyed look, _Shut up!_

Zelda seemed to ignore the conversation we were having about Link's thoughts, "So, you can understand what he thinks about."

I nodded and sarcastically replied, "No, I was just talking to the mute because he was sending me messages through his feet."

Once again, Zelda ignored my arrogance, "Alright, I do owe you two an apology. Come, we'll go to the observatory," she gestured to the guards, "Leave us, we need to speak in private."

She waltzed down the hallway, leading the hooded girl, an enchanted Link and I down the hallway and up a long spiraling marble staircase to the top of the tallest tower. She started to talk on the way up the stairs, "I'm not sure if you two know this, but you didn't fall through the temporal portals by accident."

"What's a 'temporal portal'," I asked slowly, looking around and trying to memorize the route out of the building if I needed to escape quickly.

Zelda easily answered, "A temporal portal is basically a crack in time. It allows you to jump from one point in time to another, though usually they are invisible and don't show themselves to normal people."

I sighed, "Does anything around here even make sense?"

"Not really," Zelda said jokingly, tossing her hair back and getting another array of dirty thoughts out of Link.

Zelda continued to climb the stairs, but I was starting to feel an ache in my leg that definitely wasn't leftover pain from the tracker's attack, "Ugh… Well, why did we fall through the temporal portal?"

We finally entered the room atop the observatory tower. The walls of the room were made of tan bricks and so was the flooring. There was a long window that stretched across the roof and the far side of the room. There was a large Galileo style telescope that was near the far side of the room and pointed towards the sky. There were bookshelves covered in handwritten stories about astronomy and history. Zelda easily walked over to a history book and opened it, "Legend says there is a silent hero who is born in every time period. He apparently fights with and subdues the immortal Lord Ganondorf and rescues the universe from being quite literally blown up at every time period in history thousands of times over."

I crossed my arms, "So there's some fairytale about a mute kid who saves the world from an immortal freak over and over again, what do Link and I have to do with that?"

She shook her head, "You two didn't figure it out *sigh*… Anyway, look, Link is the hero of time and that's why you're here, because he's supposed to be born in every cycle, but he doesn't exist in this time period. Link is the hero of time, understand?"

Link thought, _are you kidding me?_

I frowned, "Alright fine, as ridiculous as your little fairy tale is, that's the reason _he's _here. What about me?"

"Well," Zelda continued, flipping to a page with a picture of a small blue fairy and a strange impish creature, "The hero of time is always depicted as having a companion who can translate his thoughts into words for others to understand, I think that's where you come in."

I crossed my arms indignantly, "Really? I'm only a companion? Well then," I muttered before thinking I might want more answers, "How the heck will Link save the world?"

Zelda continued, "There's an ancient artifact known as the triforce. It was made up of three smaller components, the triforce of courage, the triforce of power, and the triforce of wisdom. It used to keep the time flow protected from paradoxes, but there was a war several thousands of years ago that shattered the triforce. Lord Ganondorf kept the triforce of power for himself, but he shattered the other two sections into seven pieces, one for each of the sages. The seven sages were the sage of spirit, the sage of water, the sage of fire, the sage of shadows, the sage of light, the sage of forest, and their leader. Do you understand what I'm saying so far?"

I nodded slowly, "Go on…"

She continued talking, "Alright. The triforce of power gave Ganondorf pure immortality, and even when he dies he will return, over and over and over again."

"So what do you two have to do with this story," I asked, gesturing at Zelda and the girl with the hood.

Zelda nodded, "I had a feeling you would ask. You see, the two of us are the last of the sages who remain alive."

"The other sages… they're dead?"

Zelda gave a melancholy nod and the blue eyed girl turned away from our conversation, "Yes. The final two died a thousand years ago. The two of us are the only ones who have been reincarnated in the cycle. The last time the sages were lost, the entire world felt an earthquake, and the oceans gave way to a massive tsunami. The sages are also the only ones who can reunite the three shards of the triforce of courage, and the four of the triforce of wisdom. All of their temples or places of living hold a shard of either the triforce of courage or wisdom."

I frowned, Kairi looked like she was unconscious with her eyes open, and Link was silent both in words and in thought. I slowly replied, "Alright, so we're part of this crazy fairy tale. But I have a bigger problem. My younger brothers and the girl I love," the girl with the hood turned away, "they vanished before we did. Did they end up here or…?"

Zelda shook her head, "I would've heard if they'd ended up here."

I stared at her icily, putting every ounce of fear, anger, and confusion behind my glare, "Then where are they?"

Zelda sighed, "I'm sorry, Terra, I don't know. They be in different time periods or they could really have been mur-"

I cut her off, "No. Just no, okay? I'm going to find them. Look, your world of fairy tales and princesses and triforces sounds nice, and it sounds like you need help, but I'm a teenager, okay? I just am trying to keep my grades up so I can go to college next year and keep my family in order. They are too," I gestured to Kairi and Link, "We just want to go home with our friends."

Zelda sighed, "I'm sorry. I would help you if I could, but you have a duty to fulfill, and finding your friends and lover can come later."

That had me ticked off, my already thin patience was worn down by this nonsense and this entire day, no this entire week had been confusing as all hell's get out, "Look, as nice as all of your story sounds and as much as I'd love for the entire world to be made of roses and chocolate, that's a fairy tale, princess. Fairy tales don't come true."

"I had a feeling you'd say that," the girl in the hood replied, and every eye was turned onto her for a moment.

She continued, "You're always such a realist, Terra, you never believe in anything you can't see."

I froze, remembering where I'd heard that last, "No, that's not true… I believe in…"

"You see," the girl replied lightly, saying the familiar conversation back at me, "You can't name one thing you believe in, can you?"

"I can," I replied evenly, "I believe in…"

I froze and didn't say the rest of the phrases out loud; hoping that Link couldn't hear my thoughts like I could hear his, _I believe in love. I always have. And it's always been with you… But how does she know that...? I only told that to one other person, ever. And that person was…_ I slowly asked, "Who are you?"

She separated her eyes from mine for a moment, "I'm sorry, princess, do you mind if I go outside? I need some fresh air or I think I might faint."

Zelda gave her a skeptical glance, "I don't think you'd need to go outside. Take off your cloak."

She shook her head, "I'm sorry, princess; I just need to go!"

She ran out of the room and slammed the door behind her and I was entranced with staring at the door where she had just been, _who are you? _ Kairi looked at me curiously, "Terra, are you okay? You look like you saw a ghost."

I shook off the feeling and turned back to the others, "I- I'm fine… This is just a lot to process, that's all."

Kairi laughed, "Yeah, at first I thought I was dreaming."

"That's only natural, Kairi," Zelda replied easily, "Now Terra."

I looked up at her, trying to shake off the feeling that this was all real and trying to tell myself that this was a dream and I was going to wake up and everything would be fine and my brothers would be safe and Aqua would be waiting to see me at my locker every morning. Ironically, that was the fantasy. Zelda continued through my daze, slowly opening the telescope and allowing several shards of glass to fall into her hand. She gently brought them over to us and held them up, where they started to shine with a purple light, "I have the first shard of the triforce of courage. With it, you should be able to control the flow of time through the temporal portals and use them to travel through time."

I sighed staring at the shards as they sparkled purple and flew into the sky above us, "I'm sorry… I need some time to think."

I walked slowly out and I heard Link think, _Wait, Terra!_

"Don't follow me."

I left the room but as I was walking out I heard Kairi say softly, "Let him go."

I walked slowly down the stairs trying to think everything through and put everything together and trying to find an answer that made sense to all of my questions. I left the tower and retraced my way out of the castle and walked into the forecourt under the steps leading to the gate and the city below. The cobblestones in the small hilltop clearing were aged and had small blades of grass and lavender wildflowers sticking between the cracks. Across the courtyard was that girl from earlier, the one who I couldn't see. I walked to her slowly, trying to figure out what to say.

I spoke gently to the girl in the hood, "Thank you for the help earlier."

She stared at me with her bright ocean blue eyes on her otherwise invisible face, "You don't need to thank me. I didn't want to lose someone again…"

I glanced at her, and she turned her eyes away from me, "I'm sorry to hear that," she turned back to me and I swore that I was starting to see more of her the more I looked at her, "Would you… would you like to talk about it?"

She shook her head lightly and said, "I'm sorry. You wouldn't understand… Even if I told you; you wouldn't believe me."

"Considering the things I've been told today, I doubt that," I said jokingly and she laughed lightly.

She smiled, and once again I swore that the more this conversation escalated, the more I could see of her, "No, trust me; you still have a lot to learn."

"I don't know how much more my brain can handle," I replied truthfully, running a hand through my hair.

She sighed, "You have no idea…"

I glanced down at her, noticing her pale complexion for the first time, "I have no idea about what?"

She shook her head, "You'll understand."

I thought for a moment, _why are you so familiar?_ "Who are you?"

She stood up and turned away, "I'm sorry, Terra, I have to go!"

She ran away into the night, leaving me very confused, staring at the place where she had just been standing and wondering the same question I had asked, _who are you?_

** End chapter two! Sorry that took so long to post, it's a long one… Oh, and just so you know, with the way school's been lately it'll probably take me about two weeks or so between chapters, I promise to lengthen them to help compensate the time lapse.**

** Yes, the sages are all going to be Kingdom Hearts characters to mix things up a bit, and yes, Ruto was not an OC, she was a depiction of Princess Ruto from Ocarina of Time as a human being.**

** Big thanks to Tatltails and Neusuada for the reviews! Sorry the updates will probably have two weeks in between them…**

** Don't leave a review if you're going to flame, and before I get the reviews telling me my grammar was off, I know. I am not an English major and I don't have perfect grammar.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: Is that a key?**

** I'm sorry this took so long… I've been busy with other stuff.**

** Thanks to Tatltails, CrazyBeverly96, and Projekt-Z for reviewing and favoriting! And double thanks to Projekt-Z and CrazyBeverly96 for following the story!**

** This chapter involves Sora and Riku, don't worry readers, Roxas will pop up again soon… I haven't forgotten him! :)**

** I also decided, especially considering she's my profile picture, it's about time I wrote something with Yuna in it…**

**Disclaimer: I do not own anything**

(**Riku's POV**)

I was slowly coming to consciousness after I fell through the portal. There was something hard beneath me, which I thought might be the bath room floor. Maybe some kid had been smoking some drug in there that makes you hallucinate or something and I inhaled too much and I passed out. I heard light giggling.

Wait, what?

Giggling… I'd passed out in the men's room, right? Why would anyone be giggling in the men's room?

I slowly blinked my eyes open to see a hard, scuffed wooden floor. That was all it took to realize that I wasn't there. I sat up quickly looking around and trying to figure out what was going on and where I was. I looked around and found the source of the giggling: three teenage girls. The one in the middle with brown hair smiled, "You're awake."

The tallest one with hair styled like a rock star frowned, "About time…"

The last girl was blonde and was massaging a very happy looking Sora's shoulders, "We just love your friend."

I rubbed my temples, trying to figure out if this was real or a dream or maybe a hallucination, "Who are you?"

"I'm Yuna," the brown haired one replied before gesturing to the other two girls, "and this is Rikku and Paine."

Yuna was the leader of the three and she stood out with her confident and slightly more mature poise than the other girls. She wore a long dress with a white top section and a flowing blue skirt. Rikku was wearing a short blue dress with orange and yellow lacing down the sides. Paine had on a long black sleeveless dress that trailed behind her on the floor a bit, though some sort of silvery sash stretched from her waist to her shoulders and was draped over them. Paine leaned against the wall, disinterested in what was going on. I frowned, "Okay…. Well, why are you guys all dressed up? Homecoming isn't until spring."

Paine gave me a look like I'd just said I'd seen a five headed purple unicorn, "First it is spring, second what the hell is a homecoming?"

I blinked in surprise at how rash she was and wondered who she was. I'd never seen any of these girls at school before. I'd never even heard of them. Plus, it was most definitely the end of November in 2011. I frowned slowly trying to figure out a logical answer and two presented themselves: I was either dreaming or hallucinating. I hoped it wasn't the latter, "Okay… Where are we?"

"Radiant Garden," Yuna replied easily, pushing Rikku over a bit so she could join her in massaging Sora's shoulders.

Sora looked like he was so relaxed he could hardly keep his eyes open, "Oh… That feels nice, can you move a little," Rikku moved down a bit giggling at the boy's reaction as she rubbed a bit lower on his back.

_Radiant Garden… Radiant Garden… Now where have I heard that before?_ I blinked in surprise, "So, can you please explain how we got here?"

"We found you lying in the woods outside," Rikku said, giggling at Sora, "We thought you guys might have got caught in the storm."

I rubbed the back of my head, noticing how wet my hair was for the first time, "Storm?"

Yuna nodded, smiling at the now slumbering Sora before moving on to talk to me, "Well, there have been a lot of storms lately. They say the water is sad and she's crying."

I frowned and crossed my arms, "The water is crying?"

"Yeah," Rikku replied, jumping up from her seated position, "They say she's lonely."

I shook off the weird notion I got. That was ridiculous. "Look, the water can't be lonely. The water is an inanimate object. Rain falls from the sky as precipitation because condensation gathers in the clouds to the point where gravity forces it to the ground, not because 'the water is sad and lonely'."

The three girls blinked in surprise and Sora turned out to be somewhat conscious, "So you did pay attention in class!"

Yuna, Rikku, and Paine gathered into a small group in the corner whispering to one another. I wasn't able to catch what they were saying until the end of their conversation, "I know; the boy has to be a sage."

"What gave that away," Paine asked, crossing her arms and returning to her previous position on the wall, "The weird clothes or his knowledge of things we don't understand?"

I froze. _Wait what? How do these girls not understand the water cycle, they look like they're older than us._ "What are you talking about, we learned about that in third grade."

Rikku gave me a curious look before crossing the room and opening a wooden window which had no panes of glass inside, just open air, "What's a grade? And why are there three of them?"  
"What is this ancient times," I asked, annoyed.

Yuna laughed, "No, stupid, it's 490."

I think I chocked on air, "What?!"

"Um, yeah," Rikku replied, waltzing back over to us, "It's 490 and you're in Radiant Garden."

The second time the impossible date was mentioned, it woke Sora up completely, "You say what now?"

Paine grumbled, annoyed, "They said it's 490. It's been 490 for three months and it'll stay 490 for another nine months, do you understand that simple fact?"

I crossed my arms, "Apparently not. Look, where can I go to talk to someone who knows what's actually going on?"

"Hmm…" muttered Yuna for a moment, and she brought a finger to her lips like she was thinking, "Ansem the wise knows more than everyone around here."

"Ansem the wise?"

"He's the wonderful leader of Radiant garden. He helps everyone who comes to him. He could probably help you with… whatever it is that is wrong with you."

I frowned, "Yeah sure. Can I get some ruby slippers and a puppy with that?"

Rikku legitimately looked like she was thinking about what I just said, "I can't get you a dog, but I think I have some red slippers. I don't have any ruby ones, I mean I wish I had some ruby ones, but-"

Paine cut her off, "Rikku, he was being sarcastic."

Rikku returned to her normal cheery self, unfazed by how rude I was to her, "Oh, Okay, but you can get to Radiant Garden if you just follow the cobblestone road."

"Follow the cobble stone road," Sora repeated.

"Yep," Yuna replied, "It stretches outside of the windmill and goes through the valley to the lake and Radiant Garden."

I nodded, "Thank you. C'mon Sora," Sora looked very upset about being torn away from the three doting girls, "We need to figure out what's going on and this Ansem guy may be able to help us."

Sora looked despondent like I'd just ran over his puppy or something as ridiculous as that, "But, Riku, what about the nice girls?"

I sighed, rubbing my temples because this entire thing was giving me a headache, "No, Sora. Besides, you already have Kairi!"

Sora scratched his head, absentminded as usual, "Oh yeah! Right… Sorry girls but we've got to go."

"Aww…" Yuna and Rikku muttered like teenage girls being torn away from a pop star.

Rikku perked up a bit, "Yeah, everything's going to be fine for them. And Yuna, I heard that there's a cute boy who goes by the name of Tidus in town," Yuna blushed bright red, "You wouldn't happen to be interested in _him_ right?"

She stuttered, "I-I'll bring t-the boys to the road," her disposition changed slightly, though her face was still bright red, "And Tidus and I are none of your business!"

Rikku and Paine both laughed and Yuna (who was still blushing) and she pulled Sora and me out of the front door.

As it would turn out, we were actually in a small old wooden wind mill and we had to be careful as we stepped out because the white cloth colored fans of the windmill were slowly spinning around, and one of them would pass in front of the front door every thirty seconds. Right outside of the front door was an old cobblestone road that stretched through the valley below and to the city behind.

Yuna gestured to the road and said, "Here, just walk down this road and you'll reach Radiant Garden."

I glanced down the road, trying to see what was behind the valley the path crossed through, but failing miserably at my attempt. Sora said, "Thank you very much."

Yuna shrugged, smiling, "It's fine, we're happy to help you."

Sora smiled and waved, pulling me as he ran down the road, "C'mon Riku."

I tried to keep up with Sora, but he was running faster than a little kid trying to catch the ice cream truck on a cold day. I shouted at him, "Sora, you're going to rip my arm off!"

He skidded to a stop so abruptly that I fell face first onto the cobblestones, banging my nose harshly against the ground. Sora knelt down next to me, staring at me nervously, "Sorry, Riku."

I stood up slowly, putting a hand under my nose to stop the flow of blood from getting on my shirt, "Its fine…"

Sora's smile returned as soon as I said that and he pointed down the road, "Come on! We have to hurry and get there soon!"

He bolted on ahead of me again, leaving me to once again play catch up and wonder why I'd even become friends with him in the first place. Then I remembered. Sora was the kid who stood up for the outsider. He was the one who was my friend when everyone else thought I was emo or gay or both. He was peppy to the point where he could brighten up anyone's day, no matter how sad they were. It was almost like he saw the world through the eyes of a young child, all shiny and colorful and innocent.

The path to Radiant Garden was beautiful in and of itself. Tiger lilies blossomed on the left side of the path on one hilltop and blue lilacs covered the other. In some places the wind had brought the two together and they blossomed with their light blue and black stained orange flowers to make an image of pure contrasting color that could've been taken straight out of a painting.

The path ended at the shore of a lake and became from there on a bridge made up of the same kind of stone the path was, but you could tell that compared to the path, the bridge was well maintained. The stones were fit together perfectly and the bridge was designed well enough to make one think that it was built by a master architect.

There was an intricate wrought iron gate at the end of the bridge and I slid the door to the gate open slowly and pulled Sora through the crack. We walked through a square filled with waterfalls that cascaded down the sides of the walls of Radiant Garden and fell into the lake. There was a large fountain in the center of the square and there was a metallic door underneath the water pressure that forced it shut. I ignored it. Sora started to run to keep up with my fast strides as I walked up the stairs that led to the main part of town, "Riku do you really think it's a good idea to just break into a town?"

I nearly stopped in my tracks, _I hadn't thought of that…_ I shook off the weird feeling I got in my stomach and said, "No, Sora, it's fine."

He shrugged and gasped as we entered the square, "Wow, it's really beautiful here."

That's when we heard a slightly familiar scream from in an alley. My eyes widened. I knew that voice, but that wasn't possible. She was-

I ran towards an alleyway to the side of the square in time to see Aqua in a bright blue sleeveless ruffled dress kicking a guy with a bright red pompadour in the head with her bright blue heels, "Pervert!"

Sora and I froze. I asked, "Aqua?"

Sora ignored the now unconscious boy on the ground and hugged Aqua, "Aqua! You're alive!"

(**Aqua's POV**)

(A little earlier)

I was confused. I remembered coming back home with my mom, showing her friend my bridesmaid dress for my aunts wedding. After that the night was a mystery. The more I tried to think about it, the more the blank kept pressing itself upon me.

I shook my head. I was asleep right? I went to bed. At least I thought I did…

My bed didn't feel quite as comfortable as I remembered it being. I turned over only to feel something hard and smooth against my back. Maybe I fell on the floor in my room or something. That's when I heard an overly confident voice above me say, "Well, _hello,_ there princess."

I shot my eyes open, _definitely not my room._

There was a boy standing over me, and he just _looked_ arrogant. You could see it in the glint in his little blue eyes. He had a bright red pompadour style haircut, the kind that people haven't had since the seventeen hundreds or earlier. He was wearing a bright blue shirt with long sleeves and brown somewhat baggy pants. He didn't have any shoes, which was even weirder. He spoke with that tone guys get when they just want to ask you out and not actually talk, "There we are. The name's Groose," he leaned in towards my face, "and who are you?"

Ugh… His breath smelled like he'd been eating a salad made of garlic and raw onions despite his teeth being shiny and white. I pushed him away and stood up, stumbling for a moment in my heels and rejecting the help he tried to give me, "Who I am doesn't concern you."

I looked around, noticing that I was in an alleyway and beyond it was an old fashioned cobblestone square, but I didn't recognize any of it. Maybe I passed out at Disney World or something? I just didn't know. I frowned at him, "How did I get here?"

"You tell me, beautiful," Groose replied, getting on my nerves.

I looked down for a second. I was wearing the dress for my aunts wedding still. It was floor length and ruffled from the waist down, and it was the only one we'd found that actually matched my hair. It still fit miraculously well, thankfully…

Unfortunately, that also meant I was wearing high heels so the dress fell right, because they just had to design these for super tall people. I frowned, "Alright, fine. Don't tell me. Now where am I?"

He circled me like a hawk, "Well, maybe I'll tell you… That is if you give me what I want."

I frowned, staring at him until he vanished behind me, "What do you want?"

I felt his hands touch my back and my body instinctively moved, and I kicked backwards hard. I heard a high pitched squeak as my foot made contact, knowing I hit the right place. I then moved up and kicked him in the head, letting Groose fall to the ground like a deadweight. I turned to see Riku and Sora standing there. Riku was the first to speak, and he asked, "Aqua?"

It was weird, running into the boys in Radiant Garden, especially after I'd just finished beating up a sexist pig who tried to unzip my dress from behind. Riku had some sort of dark red stain on the chest of his shirt which I think was blood. Sora just looked like a mess, as usual. Sora looked excited for some reason and he hugged me randomly and shouted, "AQUA, YOU'RE ALIVE!"

I blinked in surprise, and shook off Sora, "Okay; Sora, why would I be dead?"

Sora very quickly explained, "Well, you see you and Ventus disappeared and then there was this whole brouhaha where people thought you were dead and Kairi went missing and Terra got arrested for killing y-"

I stopped him right there, half-nervous and half-annoyed, "Wait, what happened to my boyfriend?"

"Oh, that," Sora calmed down for a moment before starting tentatively, as if he was frightened of me which I couldn't blame him for after he saw what I did to Groose, "Well, they said that Terra was the last person who you were seen with so, they blamed him for killing you."

I rubbed my temples, even more confused now, _isn't this a dream? I mean it didn't make enough sense to be real…_ "Oh my God… Where is he? We need to find him and clear his name."

Riku sighed, "Apparently he's about 2 millennia in the future."

I froze, "What? When… when are we?"

_That's a phrase I never thought I'd say…_

Riku shrugged at me, incredibly nonchalant considering the insane circumstances he'd just been put under, "Apparently we're in 490 AD. So yeah."

"490 AD," I asked frantically trying to find a solution to this problem that wasn't completely impossible, "How did we get here?"

Riku shrugged, "Probably through the light in the bathroom with the two of us, but I don't know about you."

Sora seemed to have distracted himself by poking Groose's unconscious body on the ground, "Wow. He's out cold…"

I laughed slightly and gave Sora a pat on the head, and he tensed up when I touched him, "You know; you keep getting distracted from the situation, Sora."

Sora shivered for a second before popping back up, "Um... Okay. What were we talking about?"

Riku and I face palmed, "Sora!"

Sora smiled that weird goofy smile he gets when he messes with people, "Just kidding!"

We sighed and Riku said, "Come on, Sora, we need to go figure this out."

I frowned, "I honestly have no idea how I got here. We picked up this dress and mom made me wear it around like I was some princess or something. I can't remember what happened after that."

"You went to the movies with Terra and Ventus," Riku replied and I blinked at him curiously, not remembering any of that, "That's what the entire murder case was about. He was the last one you were seen with."

I blinked and kept my eyes closed for a long moment, trying to remember what I'd done for the rest of the night after coming home, "No, Riku, you're wrong. I didn't go to the movies last night. Besides, if Terra took someone to the movies, it would either be his _brothers_ to spend some time with him _or_ to go on a date with me. Not at the same time, that wouldn't make any sense."

Riku shook his head, though I could tell by the look on his face that he saw the flaws in his original story, "No… You went to the movies with Terra and Ventus and you and Ventus weren't seen again afterwards."

I frowned and crossed my arms, "Alright, well if I really went to a movie then why can't I remember that?"

Riku rubbed his temples, "I… I don't know. I honestly have no idea what's going on."

I frowned at both of them, especially at Sora who had changed his attention to trying to catch a butterfly. Sometimes I wondered if that kid had ADHD or something… I sighed and rubbed my temples, "Come on, guys, let's get a move on. We need to figure this out."

Sora caught the butterfly, laughed slightly and let it go, "Okay, Aqua. The people outside of the city said that the leader here, Ansem, knows a lot and could help us."

I sighed, "Alright then, boys, let's get a move on."

I started walking up the red brick staircase that led up to the castle on the hill above Radiant Garden. Riku started to run to try to catch up with me, probably wondering how I moved so fast in high heels, "Are you sure we can trust this 'Ansem' guy?"

"It's not like we have much of a choice," I replied and continued up the hill.

Sora said, "Wait, where's Kairi?"

Riku facepalmed and I could only laugh. I remember the night those two got together. I was helping Kairi with Algebra in eighth grade…

(**Flashback**)

_Kairi, Sora, and I were sitting on her bed and the bed was scattered with loose leaf paper covered in problems and variables. Her calculator was running out of battery, and we'd used it so much that the numbers were starting to wear out. The book was open and covered in pencil marks and eraser shavings from the three of us studying so hard. It was almost 10 PM, but I promised to stay with Kairi until midnight if she needed it. Kairi said, "Thanks again for the help, Aqua."_

_ I sighed and rubbed my hands which were aching from writing down so many problems, knowing I still had an essay to write when I got home. Sora nodded, helping to clear the loose leaf papers off of the bed, "Yeah, thanks, Aqua."_

_ I nodded, "No problem."_

_ Kairi got more comfortable on the bed, "So, let's talk guys. You know, Sora, I think you and Riku would go really well together."_

_ Sora froze, nearly dropping the papers on Kairi's desk, "W-what?"_

_ Kairi said, "Come on, you don't __like__ girls right," Sora just stared at her and I was beginning to feel incredibly uncomfortable with this situation, I can't imagine what Sora was going through, "I mean, name one girl who you actually have crushed on."_

_ Sora stared directly into Kairi's eyes and tried to form any words. I think Kairi and I realized that Sora liked Kairi at the same moment. Sora still stood there, trying desperately to force out his true feelings. Kairi whispered, "Oh my God…"_

_ Sora turned bright red and ran out of the room. Kairi was quick to follow, shouting his name the whole time. I shook my head and tried not to laugh at the awkward situation. I heard the front door being shoved open and slammed shut. I looked out the window and saw Kairi catch up with Sora on the sidewalk. _

_ She grabbed the back of his arm and seemed to explain something frantically to him. Sora turned back to her and the two of them hugged tightly, walking back to the house with their hands intertwined._

_ I couldn't help but think about how sweet it was…_

(**Flashback over)**

**(Sora's POV)**

The staircase up to the castle was exhausting It winded up the hill and made me slump over slightly, exhausted, and usually I was the one running ahead. It felt like my usually boundless energy was gone.

Riku asked, "You okay?"

I yawned softly, "Yeah, I'm fine."

I walked behind Aqua, though at some point during our journey up the stairs, she started to look like she was deep in thought about something. Then she laughed randomly, making Riku and me look at one another and share a, _What?_ glance.

We walked up the rest of the stairs quietly. It took us ten minutes to walk up all of the stairs and reach the forecourt under the castle. The forecourt, of course, led to more stairs that led up to the actual castle. I collapsed on the ground in front of the stairs dramatically, "Ugh… Why are there so many stairs?"

A dark voice cut through the air, "Pathetic. I would've expected more from you, Sora."

The three of us looked up and I got a slightly lopsided view of the boy who'd said that.

The boy was wearing a shiny black mask that completely covered his face and most of his spiky black hair. He was wearing a skin tight black high necked long sleeved shirt and black pants with a red belt. His shirt outlined his muscles in red, like those tee-shirts that show skeleton bones. His hands were hidden by black gloves which also had crimson lining and he was wearing tall black boots. Every inch of his skin was hidden to us and there was something discomforting about that, like you could tell he was glaring at you from under his mask. I had to wonder how he saw out of it though. He walked down a few stares calmly, and somehow, though I was freaking out on the inside, the three of us managed to stare at him calmly.

He slowly stretched out his gloved hand, "Well then, are you three going to give me the shards, or am I going to have to take them from you?"

Aqua glared at him, "You don't want to mess with me."

Riku chuckled and as I pulled myself up from where I was sprawled on the ground I said, "No… You do not."

Aqua gave me a pat on the head; she was taller than me thanks to her heels, "Good Sora."

I smiled as she affectionately messed up my hair. Up above us, the boy in the mask laughed, "Well… Then I guess they'll have to kill you so that I can retrieve them from your cold dead bodies."

Riku snorted, feigning confidence, though I could tell he was scared, "Yeah, you and what army?"

The boy was silent though he ever so slowly snapped his fingers and the ground beneath us turned into a giant swirling pit of darkness. Aqua's eyes widened and the three of us moved so that we were facing back to back in a small triangle. Slowly, the darkness lifted off the ground and gathered into small clumps, which seemed to suddenly become animate, turning into shadow like creatures that traveled low to the ground and had sharp claws and antennae. Riku's voice stuttered in fear as he realized we were completely surrounded, "Oh… _That_ army…"

The boy on the top of the stairs released a slightly maniacal laugh, "Kill them all. We can retrieve them once they're dead."

I looked up and saw him vanish into the darkness. After about a moment it hit me that there was no way we could take down this many monsters by ourselves, even if Aqua was amazing at fighting, and I shouted hysterically, "What are we going to do? We're gonna die! We're gonna die, that's it for me!"

Aqua smacked me sharply, snapping me out of my hopelessness, "Get a hold of yourself, Sora! We're going to get through this, just follow my lead."

She proceeded to kick one of the little creatures harshly with her heels. As she did it released a small squeak and vanished, letting something small and pink quickly float up into the atmosphere. Riku followed her, picking up one of the little creatures by its antennae and chucking it into a brick column. I proceeded to pick up a big stick that was lying on the ground and was about to hit one of them with it when Riku said, "Sora. That's a stick."

I nodded, hitting one of the creatures so hard it exploded into blackness under my stick, "See, it works as well as Aqua's heels."

Riku shrugged, punching through another monster. I started swinging my stick around randomly, splatting the little monsters as I did. One of them though, melted into the ground in front of me and reappeared behind me. It slashed the back of my leg and I shouted in pain, getting both my friends' and the monsters' attention. The little creatures of the night quickly swarmed around me, flinging their sharp claws at me and forcing me to fall on the ground.

I cried out for the others to help as their darkness blocked my vision. The pain started to fade and the scene felt more distant. I heard my friends screaming my name and I managed a forced thought, _No… I can't die here._

I suddenly saw a bright flash of light and felt something in my hand. I slashed the air wildly; shocked to feel the pressures of the creatures on me vanish as I did. I blinked in the harsh sunlight for a moment; feeling momentarily blinded like someone had just taken a picture of me.

The rest of the monsters recoiled in what seemed to be fear and vanished into the shadows, not resurfacing. I looked down at the weapon in my hand and asked, "What is this?"

Riku and Aqua ran over to me and Riku asked, "Sora, are you okay?"

I was busy staring at the new weapon in my hand. It had a golden hilt and a silver blade with several sharp teeth pointing out of the side near the top. A tiny chain with a charm that reminded me of Mickey Mouse hung off the wide hilt. It almost looked like… It almost looked like a _key_.

Aqua slowly examined the blade in my hand, "What is it?"

I shook my head, mesmerized by the weapon that had saved us, "I don't know…"

**End Chapter 3**

** Sorry that took so long, I promise that Chapter 4 will be up faster.**

** Feel free to leave a review, but just don't flame.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: The garden of time**

** Luxord is going to be involved in this story... He's basically playing the role of the Doctor in Doctor Who crossed with that alien guy with the hat from Men in Black III. Just so you know, this chapter is FULL of foreshadowing. You'll see what I mean. Even if you don't, you'll know soon enough…**

** This is also the first chapter written entirely from a single characters POV, but that's probably only going to be in this chapter.**

** I wrote this chapter while listening to Clocks by Coldplay and Dearly Beloved from Kingdom Hearts. I know that's random.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts or the Legend of Zelda**

(**Roxas's POV**)

"Luck of the draw you'd end up with me," a voice said delicately.

I didn't recognize the voice, and that made me tremble. Before I opened my eyes to see the man, I listened, and heard a strangely familiar sound. The sound of clocks. They were ticking endlessly. It was utterly loud and strange. It sounded as if the clocks were amplified, as if thousands of them were ticking at the same time. I slowly opened my eyes and stood up. I was lying on a wooden floor.

I caught eyes with a strange blue eyed man. He had blonde short hair and a goatee. He was sitting at a mahogany desk which was strewn with papers, essays, and portraits; both painted and photographed, both black and white and colored. There was a black lined hourglass with pure white sand which was quickly spilling from the top orb of the hourglass to the bottom.

I blinked in surprise, and the man spoke slowly, with a British accent, "His time is running out."

The room we were in was a gigantic library, and the bookshelves stretched so far into the sky that I couldn't see the top of them. I glanced at his table. I remember one picture: a painting of a brown, dead field covered in dusty rubble, and littered in thousands of blades, all pointing down in the dusty earth, penetrating and destroying it. I stared at the man in confusion, "Who are you?"

He looked up at me. I couldn't tell how old he was, really. He had one of those timeless faces that made him look like he could be 18 or 30 or 50, but I couldn't tell which, "Luxord."

I glanced down at his hands. He was holding four cards, which were normal for the most part, except the numbers. There was the ace and eight of hearts, but then there was one red card numbered 13 and the one next to it was numbered 14. Why did he even have cards like that?

I frowned, "Luxord… Where… where am I?"

He nodded, "I see. You fell through the portal though you have no place here."

I shook my head, "Stop talking in riddles. What's going on here?"

"Time," replied Luxord easily, placing down his cards and flipping through several old paintings of different people who I didn't recognize, "Time is what goes on. Even when we don't know what it truly is."

I blinked at Luxord, confused, "Alright… When am I?"

Luxord shrugged silently, "You are every time, and no time. You are everywhere and nowhere. You are everything and nothing, Roxas. You have the power to change everything or to change nothing."

I didn't understand a word he was saying, even though I heard them, "How do you know my name?"

"I know everyone's name," Luxord replied easily, searching around his desk for something.

I blinked curiously, "Luxord… What are you?"

"I keep watch over the times. I block the creation of paradoxes. I assist the hero of time. I watch over the lost ones," he replied calmly, apparently finding what he was looking for and quickly writing a note on a piece of paper.

I frowned, "Lost ones? What are lost ones?"

Luxord finished his small note, signing it with a flourish, "Those who lose themselves in the garden of time are known as lost ones."

"So, are we in the garden of time," I asked slowly, watching as Luxord finally stood up and I finally got a good look at him.

He had on a black suit with a blue tie that matched his eyes. His shoes were simple and black, with no visible fastening mechanism. There was a small tattoo on the side of his neck which I could just barely read though I think it said, _Lady Luck_. He had two small diamond studs in his ears, and he wore two thin pure unharmed white gloves on his hand, "We are where you want to be Roxas. This place stretches beyond your imagination. This library is your room that you created for yourself. The others have their own rooms."

I couldn't help but be curious, "Can you take me to the other rooms?"

"Certainly," Luxord replied.

He led me down a thin passageway between two of the bookcases to a tall oak wood door. He slowly turned the brass hand knob and what I saw behind the door honestly surprised me.

The room was nearly empty and had walls and floors that were all pure white, so white that I could hardly tell where the wall ended and the ceiling began. The entire place was covered in a thick white mist that only went up to our ankles. But there was something far more surprising in the center of the room. In the center of the room there was a large black grand piano.

Sitting at the piano bench was a girl wearing a black long jacket with a hood which hid all of her features from me save her hands from the wrist down which were gracefully dancing across the keys.

She was playing Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. I recognized it from when I was younger and dad used to force Terra to take piano lessons because it reminded him of mom. Terra used to play it on those scary awful nights when dad used to not come home until past mid night, and it served as a lullaby for Ven and me. I loved that song, but Terra was never good at being graceful so I'd never heard it played as perfectly as when that lost girl played it.

I blinked in surprise, and Luxord said, "Interesting. The last time I entered here she was playing Für Elise. It seems she's expanded her repertoire to account for what you wish to hear, Roxas."

I closed my eyes and listened to her hitting every note of the piece with precision, as if she had written it herself, "So she's a lost one?"

Luxord nodded sadly and gave the girl a pat on the head. She didn't even move in the slightest when he did and the piece still sounded perfect, "Yes, Xion is a lost one."

"How did she end up like this," I gestured to her as she began the second movement of the sonata.

Luxord shook his head sadly, "Xion began here normally. Then she took up playing the piano and hasn't stopped playing it since then."

I stared at the girl surprised, "So she never stops playing the piano?"

"The only way lost ones can hold their identities is to find a task to do. It may be simple, it may be intricate. But eventually, what they do becomes who they are entirely. They lose their identity," Xion moved on into the third movement of the song at this point, bridging the two sections of the piece masterfully, "and they become like a puppet on invisible strings, forced to move down a set path until someone they know comes and reminds them who they really are."

I frowned, still mesmerized by the song that was hitting the air, but trying to understand what Luxord was explaining, "So, why don't you just show her to someone she knows?"

Luxord sighed lightly shaking his head, "To fix a broken soul is not so simple as to show it a friend."

"But you just said-"

Luxord cut me off a final time, "Come, we need to move on."

He started to walk away without me, but my gaze lingered on Xion as she finished the piece and subsequently began at the beginning again, "Alright, fine."

I ran to catch up with Luxord, "Where are we going?"

"We're going to a place lost in time. From there I can get you to other time periods so you can find your friends," my disposition perked up, "That's what you wish for, isn't it Roxas?"

I nodded slowly, "Um… yeah. So where are they? Can you show me them?"

"I can show you the pathway to them," Luxord replied, leading me out of the room and into what appeared to be the remnants of a destroyed city, "But you need to find them on your own."

"Right," I muttered.

The city itself consisted of broken and destroyed buildings and cracked cobblestone passageways. Water welled up from broken brass pipes connecting buildings to the castle above. We were in a courtyard that had a raised part around a smaller central circle. The central circle consisted of what appeared to be half of a flower made of stone and the other side was cracked and broken to the point where the original design was indecipherable. Dead trees ringed the square where there weren't ramps down to the lower section. A little girl with long brown hair and green eyes ran up the stairs to Luxord, "Luxord, Luxord, Luxord, Luxord!"

Luxord looked down on the girl, smiling, "Hello, Aerith."

Aerith frowned. She looked like she couldn't have been a day older than 6. She had long brown hair that was fish-tail braided down her back that was tied up with a large pink bow. She was wearing a light pink sundress with spaghetti straps and tan sandals. She pointed down at the square accusingly, "Yuffie pulled my braid again," a boy with spiky black hair ran up the ramp after her, "she keeps teleporting around for no reason, Leon is destroying stuff," she gestured to the boy who'd just ran up, "And Zack is trying to give me cooties!"

Zack frowned, "I am not!"

Zack looked like he was about the same age as Aerith. He had black hair that somehow spiked backwards, and I don't know how he got it to stay that way. He had large bright blue eyes and a tiny scar on his cheek. He had on a black tee shirt and black shorts. He was wearing worn out converse sneakers that were so well used that the soles were beginning to fall out of the shoes. The two of them started arguing like little kids when there was one cookie and two of them, "You did to!"

"Did not!"

Luxord stepped between the two of them, "Alright, Aerith, Zack, you both know that fighting will only bring you to an early grave."

Zack frowned, "Yes, Mr. Luxord…"

He turned to Aerith, "I'm sorry I kissed your cheek… I thought you would like it."

I couldn't help but think about how sweet that was, two little kids who cared about one another but didn't understand romance at all. Aerith crossed her arms in front of her chest before saying, "Okay, fine," her disposition lightened up a bit, "C'mon, let's go see what Mr. Cid is doing!"

She pulled the surprised boy down an alleyway to the side of the square. Luxord laughed, shaking his head like a father watching his children play. I looked up curiously, "Who were they?"

Luxord's smile seemed to vanish, "Those were two of the lost children who live here."

I remembered how Xion looked when she was sitting there, playing the piano incessantly for eternity and asked, "Are they going to end up like Xion?"

Luxord shook his head, "No. You see, this group of children and Cid, the man who raises them, all used to live in the city where we're standing," I looked around in surprise when he said that, "When the city was washed away by a tsunami their lives were taken along with the storm," he left me for a moment so I could process that thought.

_No way_… That wasn't possible, was it? I slowly said, "They're dead?"

Luxord nodded sadly, "They died with their storm, but unfortunately, they were thrown off course of the path to the afterlife, and they cling to this timeless place as their very existence depends on it. They have no true age, time or place. Truthfully, they could be any age they want or look any way they want, but they're too young to understand the truth about themselves."

I gasped in surprise, "Those kids were dead… And they couldn't go to heaven, so they ended up stuck here?"

Luxord nodded, "You are understanding me then, Roxas."

I nodded meekly, "Then, if they're lost like Xion is, how come they keep living the way they do?"

He sighed, running a hand through his hair, "The true thoughts and feelings of a lost one are a mystery to me, but I do know that they are forced to fall into a routine every day of their life. Some are more severe than others, like Xion who constantly plays the piano. These children wake up, Yuffie pulls Aerith's braid and Zack gives her a kiss on the cheek. Leon goes on a rampage and starts to destroy random things and Aerith comes to complain to me. Then she forgives Zack and the children spend the rest of their day with Cid until they fall asleep. They do the same thing over and over, and their minds are forever trapped in the routine until someone alive breaks it."

I shook my head, "That's awful. How could that ever happen to somebody?"

Luxord replied, "I do not know. I wouldn't give too much thought to the ways of the lost ones," he patted my shoulder lightly, snapping me out of my trance, "Now, then. Roxas, why are you here?"

I frowned, "Well, last night I went to go get my brother home from the police station, then this random kid who was looking for his friend came and talked to us. I think his name was Link or something… Then we got him back and we were going to walk home. I remember a huge flash of light, but I can't remember anything after that."

Luxord nodded, "Then everything is as it should be."

I sighed, "But now I lost both of my brothers and I can't even go home…"

_Not only that, but you are confusing the heck out of me…_

Luxord gave me a pat on my head, reminding me of how annoyingly short I was, "It's alright Roxas. As a matter of fact, the terminal is hidden within the castle."

"I'm sorry," I said, "I'm just a little confused. The what?"

Luxord sighed, rubbing his temples, "That's right, you don't know anything", he started to walk through the square towards a set of ruined brick stairs on the other side, "Come, we must go to the terminal of time."

I nodded shakily, still confused and wishing I had my brother back. He walked up the broken steps and I followed as closely behind him as I could. I had to be careful because some of the stairs were cracked in various places with loose bits of stone that would crumble down the hill if you stepped on them, other steps that were unstable like rocks on a hiking trail, and other steps that weren't even there anymore, so you had to skip a step. I jumped over one of the missing steps, trying to catch up with Luxord, "So, Luxord," I paused for a second as I nearly tripped over a crumbling stair, "Where are we anyway? You said this was a real place."

Luxord shrugged, "It depends on the time period, really. In the distant past it was a beautiful prosperous city known as Radiant Garden. After the tsunami that ravaged it, it was simply known as Hollow Bastion."

I looked around at the empty place around me, half to approve of the name and half to wonder how many more stairs there were left, and thankfully there weren't that many, "Huh. Then how did this place end up in the Garden of Time?"

Luxord replied, "Hallow Bastion's ruins were eventually destroyed, many years before you were born."

I curiously asked, "But, why?"

"You should learn not to question the behavior of human beings, Roxas," Luxord said calmly, "It's as if you were questioning why the ocean crashes against the shore or why the sun shines every evening and the moon comes out at night."

I was starting to get used to Luxord's style of talking, it almost felt like he was writing a poem with his speech the majority of the times he opened his mouth. I replied, "But there are scientific explanations for those things! There's a reason for everything, including people's feelings and actions."

Luxord laughed, "There are 'scientific' explanations for everything, correct Roxas? But you can't look into someone's mind and see their thoughts, their emotions, their truths, their lies, their light or their darkness. One never knows the secret of another's heart," I stopped to think about that for a moment, "You shouldn't keep trying to find answers in your mind. Some things you aren't meant to understand. Learn to keep an open mind, Roxas, and the rest will follow."

I stood completely still for a moment, trying to process what he was telling me. Luxord released another chuckle, "Don't overthink it. Come along. You want to see your brothers again, correct?"

I nodded, dazed and followed him. He led me through the broken down hallways of the castle until we reached a large library with two floors, separated by a spiral staircase. It was beautiful, but imperfect thanks to water damage.

All around the castle, there was a permanent line of dried dirt halfway up the wall. The stone walls were lined with mahogany bookcases and they stretched along the walls and into the center of the room. It looked like a smaller and less confusing version of the library where I had met Luxord. The books were organized by color and were lined up perfectly so that all of the covers were in line with one another. Luxord walked up to one of the bookcases on the wall pointing at the perfectly lined up orange books and scanning the shelves like he was looking for something. He carefully glanced at the third shelf up before saying, "There you are."

I squinted to try and see what he was looking at and he pulled a black book out of the bookshelf, which caused the bookshelf to slide to the side, revealing a hidden passage. He turned and handed me the large black book and said, "Here, Roxas. I only ask you one thing. Never read the book, and if you do, never read ahead."

I looked down at the black novel in my hands and saw that there was a strange symbol that looked kind of like three triangles that had been attached to one another to form a larger triangle. The author's name wasn't written on the book, but there was a V engraved into the side of the book. I asked, "Why can't I read it?"

"Someday you will understand, but," he shook his head, "you cannot read it or your future would be set in a single direction. For now, your future is unpredictable and uncertain."

I frowned, "Um… Okay."

I was officially done with trying to understand anything that Luxord said to me. None of it made any sense after all, so why should I bother trying?

I followed him through the unlit passage, using my hands to guide me through the darkness and trying to follow behind the sound of Luxord's footsteps, which was a lot harder than it sounds.

Eventually we stumbled into a room that was so bright that it left me with sparks stuck in my eyes. I blinked hard, trying to get the light to fade and the appearance of the room to return to normal. "Welcome," Luxord said calmly, "to the Terminal of Time."

I blinked in shock at my surroundings. The room we were in was like one of those giant spherical theatres where the walls are round and there are pictures on every part of it. The images themselves appeared to be clips from various time periods showing different things: One of them looked like two knights jousting in medieval times. Another looked like Julius Ceaser giving a speech and another showed the funeral of a president. The images were about the size of my head and layered unevenly on top of one another so that some were completely visible at the top of the pile of images, while others were only partially visible, buried underneath more prevalent pictures. I was so mesmerized I nearly didn't notice it when Luxord started talking again, "From here we can travel to any time period you wish and find specific people at different time periods. We're searching for your brother Terra, am I not correct?"

He raised his right hand straight out and all of the images began spinning around the sphere, first at a very slow speed, though it gradually became faster and faster to the point where it was dizzying to look at the pictures. I managed to say, "We're looking for both of my brothers, not just Terra."

He started to move his hand around, which brought the shuffled images to an abrupt stop and some images moved to the top of the pile in the path his hand was making, like he was searching for something, "I suggest we take things one step at a time, and begin with Terra."

I nodded and watched as he pulled a picture of my brother out of the crowded screen. It switched pictures several times so that it was a yearbook picture when he was seven, then a family portrait of him with Ven and me, and then a picture of him hugging Aqua tightly in a garden I didn't recognize. Luxord frowned, and snapped his fingers and another one of the temporal portals of light appeared in front of him. This time, though, I could hear Terra's voice coming from the portal… He sounded like he was saying thousands of things at once in the background that I couldn't hear, but one statement was clearer than the others: _Roxas… Come over here, I'm waiting for you._

I blinked in surprise, feeling almost entranced by the light and my brother's voice and stepping towards the light. Luxord snapped me out of it for a moment by saying, "I need to warn you of something vitally important Roxas."

I kept staring at the light, and it kept enticing me to walk into it, "What is it?"

"Be careful," Luxord said, "Do not cause any paradoxes in time. Something as simple as stepping on a butterfly could ensure that you will never be born."

I nodded, "Right. Don't change history."

I took a deep breath and walked into the light.

_Don't worry Terra and Ventus… I'm coming._

**End chapter 4**

** Alright, I should warn you now that chapter 5 is going to be ****huge**** so it's going to take me a longer time then the past two chapters to write. I'm sorry about that, it couldn't be helped.**

** Sorry if Luxord was confusing, it fits his character both in this story and in Kingdom Hearts itself. If you didn't notice little things that may become important later, you'll understand later in the story. For people who don't know too much about Kingdom Hearts: Zack, Aerith and the other lost ones in Hollow Bastion are not ocs.**

** Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a review, but please don't flame. Critiques are welcome, just remember that I'm not perfect and I can make mistakes so please don't be too hard on me! :)**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5- The threat begins**

** And now everyone slowly begins to come together. Sorry this took forever to post, I've been busy. Plus, ahem, look at the word count for this chapter if you can. If you can't, it has over 10,000 words. That's for the promise to my readers that these chapters would be longer and farther apart when it comes to updating this story. Oh, and truthfully this chapter was supposed to be twice the length, but I cut it in half to save you guys reading time… I'm nice like that.**

** Oh, PS, this is the first occasion where we see 'naughty Link's thoughts' XD. They're nothing substantially dirty, don't worry.**

**(Roxas's POV)**

I walked into the light which was so blinding I had to close my eyes; otherwise it might have been as damaging as if I stared at the sun for hours. This time wasn't the same as the last time I time traveled. Instead of falling out of the sky, my legs were moving against my own will, walking me down the path filled with light. The passage was anything but silent and I heard people's voices whispering from all sides. I recognized a couple of them as people I knew, but the majority of them were just jumbled up unfamiliar voices of varying timbre around me. I couldn't quite tell where the voices were coming from. They felt like they were coming from everywhere at once all around me and it was somewhat scary.

I was tempted to open my eyes as I made my way through the passage across time, but I decided it was better to keep them shut because of the harshness of the pure white light around me.

After another moment the voices faded into silence and I blinked my eyes open to find myself standing on a dirt path leading to a gate of an old fashioned looking town. When I first opened my eyes, my vision was covered in spots like how you can't see after you've had your picture taken. I blinked a couple more times, trying to make out what the sign above the gate said. After I finally got used to the normal light of the sun I glanced at the sign and read it: _Hyrule City_

This was a city? Who called it that? It looked like an old fashioned village from the dark ages to me. I shook off how strange it was that the place looked that way, remembering that Terra had been transported to the past and I was probably centuries before I was born. I walked into the town; it was time to start putting my family back together.

_Wait for me, big brother; I'm coming to find you._

**(Link's POV)**

Terra didn't come back to the room after he left in his angry fit. I was worried about him and after we waited for about five minutes in a long awkward silence, Zelda suggested, "We should go find him."

Kairi nodded, "I feel bad. He probably feels like his world is being torn to shreds. I know I'd be really upset if I lost Sora and Riku."

If I could, I would've reminded her that we already had lost them. I could tell by her forced smile that she was trying not to admit that we had been put in the same situation as him. Zelda tapped her foot on the floor, flipping through her book on the hero of time with boredom in her eyes, "Does he always make us wait like this?"

I looked at Kairi curiously and she gave me the same confused look back. She spoke for both of us, "I don't know."

Zelda frowned, crossing her arms and giving us both a very even stare, "So let me get this straight, both of you know nothing about this guy?"

I shrugged, _um… Not really, no._

Kairi said, "Well… I knew his girlfriend pretty well…"

Zelda sighed, "Well, if we don't know anything about him then we have no room to judge his actions."

I hadn't thought about it that way. All I really knew about him was the case, right? People thought he was a complete basket case, and yet he'd already saved my life today from that insane Mako guy and the way we could communicate was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was something strange and special, being able to converse and banter with someone for the first time in my life. I'd heard other people talking, but it was strange to actually be able to 'voice' my opinion on anything I wanted to for once instead of always being the silent bystander.

Zelda walked past the table and opened the door, turning around and putting her hands on her hips, "Well, do you want to find Terra or not?"

I nodded curtly, but I was really thinking, _okay, wow, does she understand what standing like that does to my mind? Oh my God, is she actually trying to pose seductively or something? Okay, Link, calm down; resist the urge to kiss Princess Zelda. . . Resist…_

Kairi waved a hand in front of my face "Link! Earth to Link!"

I snapped out of it and shook my head, and found I had a much bigger problem… Kairi walked over to Zelda, "Well, are you coming or what?"

_Oh God…_

I slowly followed them, walking stiffly and trying not to have naughty thoughts about the princess again, especially around Terra considering he could literally tell what I was thinking and had laughed at me already about this. I slowed my thoughts down a bit, _right, see? She's a princess and you're just a kid from Florida. You couldn't be with her anyway._

With that, I managed to clear her out of my head and follow Zelda and Kairi down to the forecourt of the castle. Zelda stopped the two of us on the stairs, about halfway up them and held us there so we could look at what was happening below us.

To my surprise, Terra hadn't run off into the woods or the town, but he'd stayed right under the castle. We watched him silently for a little while. He looked around, not noticing us and he almost seemed to check if no one was watching. Then he frowned and picked up one of the stones of the ground and chucked it as far as he could throw, putting all of his pent up anger, frustration and fear behind the throw. He continued to use this process on several more stones, watching them fly off into the distance and listening to them cracking branches in the trees. Then he did something that shocked me even more. He collapsed to his knees, barely keeping himself from falling on his face by shooting his trembling arms out to support himself so he wouldn't fall over. Then he cried.

Yeah, Terra was crying. That's a phrase I never thought I'd say. Sadly, that was only the first time I would see him like that.

The three of us stood on our spot on the stairs, too shocked to speak for a moment. Zelda was the first one to break the silence. She shook her head, "Every human has a breaking point. He just hit his."

Kairi was the first to actually approach him. She knelt down in front of him and said, "Hey… It's okay. I know it's hard to think about, and I know it's weird that we're stuck in the past, but I'm sure they're fine. It's just like how I know that Sora and Riku will be fine when we come back too."

Terra looked up, sobbing quietly, nothing loud, just the chest chokes. He shook his head and I slowly walked down the stairs and over to him, Zelda slowly following me. Kairi helped him up and hugged him. I looked over at Zelda curiously, _should we-?_

She walked over to Kairi and joined her in comforting him. I walked over and completed the small group hug. It was an awkward thing between people who hardly knew one another (except for Kairi and me) but at the same time, there was something profoundly poignant that tied us all together.

Terra had a secret. Hidden under the façade of the way he tried to push people out and tried to pretend to hate everyone, there was still a nice person.

We stayed like that for about five minutes until he was finished crying. He slowly wiped off his cheeks and muttered, "Sorry you had to see that…" he turned away from all of us for a moment before saying, "If you tell anyone I'm soft I will personally bring an end to all of you."

Kairi smiled and nodded, Zelda released a small giggle and I just shook my head, _not that I can __**tell**__ anybody._

Terra laughed, earning confused looks from both of the girls, "I guess you're right."

I smiled; _I think they think you're crazy!_

Terra shook his head, "You're making me look crazy, Link."

Kairi was mesmerized that he was able to read my mind, "How are you doing that?"

Terra shrugged, "Speaking of which," he turned back to us, "So, princess Zelda or whatever your name was… How do we use portals of time? The faster we can figure this all out and get home the better."

Zelda sighed, "I'm sorry… I don't know how to operate a temporal portal. You would have to find one of the watchers or masters of time if you wanted to do that."

_The what?_ I thought.

Terra rubbed his temples like he was getting a headache from all of the complications, "What are watchers and masters?"

Zelda said, "Well, you see, the watchers and masters come from the same group of people. Both of the groups keep watch over the garden of time and are known to make sure that paradoxes do not happen."

I frowned, _Wait; what?_

Terra said exactly what I thought, "Wait; what?"

She sighed thoughtfully, ignoring us, "I'm pretty sure there are only two left, Luxord, the final watcher of time, and that the oldest one is called Master… Master something I can't remember what… I do know that the Master was locked out of the Garden of Time because he tried to forge the x-"

Terra cut her off, "Look, princess, is this explanation gonna take long?"

Zelda crossed her arms over her chest, "It's Zelda, and if you really don't care I won't tell you. Come on; let's get you set up for your journey."

She walked away, growling softly in annoyance, soon to be followed by the three of us.

_Looking back on that day, I wish that Terra had listened to the rest of Zelda's explanation. Then maybe he might have lived…_

**(Kairi's POV)**

Well, there was something I could tell about Terra, he was really impatient. It got annoying at some points, but it made sense at others. I could tell it was getting on Zelda's last nerve and judging by the look on her face, she was done talking to us.

Zelda led us down the stairs and into the crowded streets of Hyrule, which smelled so bad that I had to cover my nose. What, did they let pigs wander around on the street here?

She walked through a thin alleyway that I wouldn't have even known existed if she hadn't pointed it out. The two roofs of the houses around the thin alley were so low that Terra hit his head on them a couple of times. I heard a bit of banging and he muttered a few swear words, rubbing his head.

She slowly walked up to an old battered wooden door hidden at the end of the alleyway. She frowned and knocked it slowly three times, then fast three times. A tiny window opened in the door, just big enough to reveal someone's small black eyes, like beetles. He blinked and asked, "What's the password?"

Zelda crossed her arms, "Error, you know it's just me, Princess Zelda. You can let me in."

She pressed the door and managed to get it open just a crack before he pushed it closed again, "'Fraid I can't do that for you, ma'am. Too many shape shifters nowadays. You need to tell me the password otherwise I can't let you in."

Terra hit his head on the roof again, "Shit…"

Zelda frowned, and rolled her eyes, "I am Error."

The slit slammed shut quickly and the man opened the door, "Why, if it isn't Princess Zelda! Come on in, and bring your friends!"

_This guy is absolutely crazy,_ I thought, and judging by the looks on Link's and Terra's faces, they definitely agreed with me.

He had thinning black hair and a thick black beard with several gray streaks. He had small blue eyes and his skin was tainted with ashes. He had on a dark blue faded shirt and tan burlap pants that were patched with variously colored squares of inexpensive fabric in several places and had tiny burn holes in them. His shoes were old and they had several seams where they had messily been sewn back together, and even then they were falling apart. He stood aside and welcomed us into his hidden place of business, which was much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. He frowned, "Lea, are you done with that sword yet?"

A young boy's voice yelled back from the back of the store, "It's almost ready, sir."

I was shocked by the contents of the store and Link was slack jawed. Terra just glanced around and nodded his approval.

It was practically a medieval weapons superstore in there. There were large bookshelves and slanted pieces of wood were covered with wooden bows, iron shields and lances or various sizes. The walls were lined with suits of armor that were both short and tall, designed for men and women and made of different metals; some of them were shinning and lustrous, others were dull and others were made of finely crafted chainmail. Between them were different swords of various sizes, one of which, labeled Masamune was so long that it stretched from one side of the room to the other and had to be suspended by five separate wooden pegs. The man who had opened the door offered his hand to the three of us, "My name is Error. Any friend of the princess is a friend of mine. Feel free to pick out anything you like. I need to go check on my apprentice," he started to walk down the hallway, "Now, I'm going to check on my apprentice, but I'll be back. Just remember, you don't chose the sword, the sword chooses you."

Terra frowned, "Oh great, more crazy people," he straightened out his back and rubbed the bump that was forming on his head, "At least the roof is higher here."

I nodded, still somewhat mesmerized by the sheer amount of stuff that was packed into such a small place. Zelda crossed her arms and picked a wooden bow up off of one of the shelves, "You guys coming or what?"

She strung an arrow on it expertly, pointing it down towards the floor instead of at us, which I was thankful for in case her finger slipped, "Well?"

I nodded sheepishly and looked around the weapons on the shelves, trying to find one that I probably wouldn't kill myself with if I tried to use it. Unfortunately that didn't leave me many options seeing as I had no idea how to use anything in the entire store. I picked up a long stick with a spiked ball attached to it only to have it drop heavily to the floor, splintering a plank of wood the moment I tried to lift it, _well, definitely not that one…_

Link was poking around the bows, looking for one that sparked his interest. Terra on the other hand, was staring at one thing in particular. There was a bronze blade on the wall. It had a blue large handle and it almost looked like a gigantic key. And by gigantic I mean it was about as tall as I was. Terra reached up towards it and his hand hovered over it for a second like he was afraid to take it. Zelda must have noticed because she laughed, "Terra, you're allowed to touch it, no one's going to cut off your hand."

Terra released a chuckle, "Considering what's been happening lately, I wouldn't be surprised if they did."

He picked up the sword in one hand, which was impressive considering I probably couldn't even lift it with both hands. He frowned and held it out as if he was testing it. He shrugged, "It's pretty cool."

He looked almost like he was examining the details of the sword itself before nodding his approval. Something surprising happened… The sword flashed and vanished out of his hand. He blinked in surprise at his empty hand, "Where did it go?"

He stared at his hand again for a moment and the blade reappeared in his hand, "Okay, then."

It flashed and disappeared again, "How is it doing that?"

Error decided that was the perfect time to reenter the room, scolding a kid with spiky crimson red hair who he'd brought up from the back of the store, "Lea, what did I tell you about when we have royal visitors?"

"Drop whatever you're doing and help them in any way that you can," Lea muttered.

Lea had hair that spiked upwards and back and sharp emerald green eyes. His skin was pale and covered in dirt and ashes. He looked like he was about eleven years old, maybe twelve, but I couldn't tell; I was never good at judging people's age by appearance.

Zelda smiled and gave him a pat on the head, "Hi, Lea, how's your training going?"

"Busy," he muttered, "I was in the middle of working on a sword when you came, and Error came back and bothered me."

Error was busy examining Terra, like he was trying to find out his measurements just by looking at him. He walked in a circle around him, "Yes, I think I have the perfect thing for you, come with me."

He pushed him against his will to the back room. Terra gave me a confused look as he was pushed out of the room. Error shouted from the back, "Lea, I could use some help back here!"

Lea sighed, rubbing the back of his head tiredly, "Why is it always me?"

I watched him leave the room as well, feeling my heart sink a bit at the thought of having to figure out which one of these stupid weapons was going to work. I glanced across the room to where Zelda was showing Link how to use a bow. She guided his hands into the proper position and I noticed him blushing lightly. He was completely smitten with her, but judging by the calm look on her face, she didn't feel the same way. Or at least, not yet…

I returned to my task of figuring out which one of these weapons, if any, I could actually use. I pulled a short steel blade off of the wall and swung it wildly for a moment, trying to get the hang of having something in my hand. Just **no**…

I tried a spear but it was so long I fell forwards and had to pull the spiked tip out of the floor where it seemed to be permanently lodged.

After trying nearly everything in the store and failing at each attempt, I was about ready to throw all of the weapons against the wall and scream. So I picked up a small dagger from the shelf and chucked it towards the wall. It stuck, imbedded deep in a crack in the wood on the wall, perfectly centered. I gasped, _that actually worked…_

I threw another dagger at the wall, hitting nearly the same spot with the crack, just a little higher than the last one. I smiled and picked up the small bag full of daggers before pulling the other two out of the wall. I carefully put them back into the little bag, hoping that I wouldn't cut myself on the sharp edge as I put it away. I took another look at the bag, trying to figure out how I was supposed to hold it and found a leather strap attached to the back of it.

I stared at it for a second, turning it over in my hands and feeling the concealed blades rub against my fingers as I did. I stared at the strap for about a minute before sliding it onto my leg so that I could check if that would work. I was once again surprised to find out that it actually did. I smiled at the tiny victory of finding a weapon and heard an arrow shoot past my ear, "Link!"

He turned bright red and scratched the back of his head, his way of saying, _oops, sorry…_

Zelda sighed, "Link, remember what I told you, you have to be careful where you point a loaded bow, no matter whether you were planning to use it or not. You never want to strike your friends with friendly fire."

He nodded, still awkwardly staring at her. I sighed, slightly put off by the situation. Link strung another arrow and shakily tried to shoot it properly. Zelda shook her head and looked at me, "Kairi, we need to talk."

"Oh, uh, okay," I replied, "What do you want to talk about?"

"I meant in private," she responded.

I looked at her, noticing the serious look in her eyes, she looked so grim that it made me crack up a little, "Okay, Zelda."

She nodded; pulling me out of the room and out into the alleyway outside of Error's little shop and carefully closing the door behind us, banging on it for a moment like she was trying to check if anyone was following us. She sighed, "Alright, finally. I think you're adjusted enough to the craziness going on around here to listen to what I'm about to tell you."

I frowned, "Well, not really. This whole thing is really confusing, but I still have questions left. Like, where are Sora and Riku? And why am I here?"

Zelda sighed, "I don't know where Sora and Riku are, and I'm really, really sorry about that. I do know why you're here and who you are."

"What do you mean 'who I am'," I asked slowly, trying to grasp what she was telling me.

She admitted, "You, Kairi, your entire life is a paradox."

I blinked in shock, "What? N-no, that's a lie!"

She shook her head, "I'm sorry, but it's the truth. You're my sister. You were meant to live in this time period, with me, but when the last Master of Time went rogue, you were forced into the future, living out your life oblivious to what happened, and not knowing who you really were."

She paused to let that statement sink in, "I'm sorry, but you can't go back to where you came from. it was your presence there that caused the cracks in time in the first place which scattered the people around you in your town across the centuries."

I fell to my knees, shaking my head, "No, that's a lie! It can't be true, it's not true!"

…But deep down, the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I was adopted, but there were no records of my parents anywhere that I could find. There had to be a reason we were scattered across time, and there had to be a reason that so many people other than Link, the hero of time, ended up back in time if they didn't belong there.

She continued to talk, "If you don't believe me, then I'm sorry, but there will come a day when you have to, Princess Kairi."

_Princess Kairi… No way. Just no way._

I slowly let what she just said sink in before standing up, "I… I…"

Zelda gave me a light tap on the shoulder, "Whatever you do, don't tell anyone. I don't want them to worry about you. Plus, if they know, they'll try to stop you from staying where you belong and try to force you to come back."

"Well what about Sora," I asked softly, praying that I would still be allowed to have him with me.

"I don't know," she admitted, making my heart sink, "I don't know how relationships across time work. I know some things, but I don't know everything, only the watchers of time know everything."

"Tell me, is there any way I can change the future so I can be with him," I asked.

He mattered the most to me. I didn't want to be trapped here and never see him again. I wanted to be with him, after all he was the first person I'd ever loved, and I hadn't even gotten a chance to kiss him yet! If I couldn't see him again it just wouldn't be fair. I wouldn't be able to handle that…

Zelda frowned, "Well, a wise man once said: 'Time does not travel in a linear set direction. Life is full of choices, and alternate time lines are created by the people in the situations making different decisions. These time lines shatter and scatter, some running parallel to one another and others tearing away from the original line, forming a complex spider web of choices. You are in charge of your own future. You two might be able to stay together on one of them."

The two of us stared at one another evenly before we realized the wooden door had shut behind us. She released a groan of annoyance and banged on the door, "Error! Error, open this door!"

Error's tiny black eyes were revealed to us again, "What's the password?"

"Goddammit, Error, its Zelda, now open this door!"

His eyes narrowed, "Not even close!"

Zelda released a growl, seething in annoyance. She took a step back and kicked the door down. Error blinked in surprise from the other side, "Oh my."

Zelda brushed wood shavings off of her shoe, "You might want to invest in a new door."

I giggled hysterically. I guess that's what you get when you force everyone who tries to come in to answer a password. I wandered back inside and to my surprise; Error forced the door back up on its hinges. He sighed, "Princess, please refrain from kicking down all of my doors, this is the third time this month I've had to replace this door."

"Well, then you should stop giving me reasons to kick it down then," she replied, stretching like nothing of interest had happened.

Link's mouth was dropped so far down that he looked like it was about to hit the floor and he inadvertently shot an arrow right above Error's head. He looked like he wanted to apologize profusely for what he just did, but as usual he didn't have the ability to voice his opinion on anything.

As he was running across the room to check on what damage he caused, a metallic and slightly muffled voice hit the air, "Link, however many times you apologize, you should be more careful about where you point arrows."

I looked towards the back of the store where the voice was coming from and blinked in amazement, "Terra?"

**(Terra's POV)**

I smiled. They were all staring at me, and for once in my life I felt like I was standing out from the crowd for a good reason. They'd outfitted me with full bronze armor that I could force on or off by simply punching a panel on my shoulder. I was currently looking through the shaded visor which made the whole world look like I was seeing it through sunglasses. I said, "Well guys, what do you think?"

Zelda smiled, "I say you look like a proper knight, Terra. Now all you need is a princess to rescue."

I laughed, and my voice still sounded weird echoing around inside of my helmet, "Oh trust me, Aqua's not the kind of girl who needs rescuing."

_All the more reasons I miss her so much._

Error walked back over to me, punching my chest, but I couldn't even feel it. He shook the pain out of his hand, "This armor makes you nearly immortal."

I smiled, feeling protected and impressed, "Really?"

He nodded, circling me, "Yes. You could stab it with a thousand swords and you would still be intact."

I chuckled slightly, sarcastically saying, "Hopefully I don't have to take you up on that."

He chuckled, "I hope so too."

Link cracked a smile, _with the way things have been happening lately, that doesn't sound too insane._

I sighed, "Yeah, but that sounds painful, Link."

Kairi frowned, "Guys, can we please stop talking to thoughts? It's starting to freak me out."

I was about to respond to her when I heard a familiar voice shouting, "Let go of me!"

My eyes widened behind the visor, "Roxas!"

I ran, pushing the door out of the way, and to my surprise it fell to the ground with only a slight touch. I bolted through the alley, ignoring the way the spokes on the top of my helmet scratched against the low rooftops. I quickly got to the street in time to see a struggling Roxas being picked up by two guards, "Put me down!"

I ran up behind them, "Hey!"

They turned in surprise towards me, and judging by the shock on their faces, they must have assumed that I was somehow superior to them. I glared at the two of them icily through the visor, "Put him down, right now."

Both of them complied with my request almost instantaneously, dropping Roxas and running off, yelling about how I was probably much higher in command then they would ever be and trying to get out of there before they got into bigger trouble.

Poor Roxas didn't stand back up after they dropped him on the ground. He mumbled something that sounded a bit like "Ow…"

I knelt down next to him, "Are you okay, Roxas?"

He shook his head, rubbing one of his arms where a blotchy bruise was starting to form near his elbow, "No…" he looked up at me curiously, "Who are you?"

I laughed, which still sounded like it was strangely echoing around my head, "Come on, Roxas, it's me, don't you recognize me?"

He shook his head, "Um… no," he said softly, but then his little blue eyes filled up with naïve hope that made me want to laugh and hug him again, "How do you know my name? Have you… Have you seen my big brother?"

I laughed again, punching the panel on my shoulder that retracted the armor until it only covered my left arm, "I am your big brother!"

His eyes widened for a moment and he chucked himself at me, hugging me so forcefully he knocked me to the ground, "Terra!"

I slowly hugged him back, ignoring the looks we were getting from everyone else on the street. I smiled, hearing him sniffling into my chest quietly. He wasn't quite crying, he was just holding me and whimpering. I slowly stood up, dragging the clingy boy up with me. Zelda, Link, and Kairi all slowly walked out of the hidden alley, weaving their way to us through the crowd. Roxas kept whispering my name and trembling.

Zelda smiled, "So, Terra, who's your friend?"

"This is one of my little brothers," I replied, "Roxas."

Kairi smiled brightly at the two of us, and Link thought, _well… I think that it's really sweet that you're such a good older brother, Terra._

I smirked, "Yeah, yeah. If you guys tell anyone I'm soft then I will personally hunt you down and bring an end to all of you. You got that?"

Link nodded shakily, thinking I was actually serious about that, but Kairi just laughed, and she and Zelda both managed to simultaneously say, "_Sure_ we won't, Terra."

I frowned, "I mean it."

Zelda was the one who giggled this time, "I'm sure you will.

I groaned, "Guys… I mean it. Really, I don't want people back home to think of me differently than they do now."

Kairi shrugged, "Whatever you say."

I frowned and managed to get Roxas (much to his protest) off of me. I sighed and said, "Roxas, how did you get here? I thought you didn't follow us through the portal."

Roxas tilted his head to the side slightly, "Portal, what do you mean a portal," he snapped his fingers suddenly like he randomly had an idea of what I was talking about, "Oh! Do you mean the random talking light on the sidewalk?"

"Yeah, Roxas," I said calmly, making sure to extend my patience and be as gentle as I could with my little brother, "it's called a temporal portal."

Roxas nodded, "Oh, okay. I went to this place called the Garden of Time and met this really weird guy named Luxord and he was really confusing but I just didn't want to lose my big brother."

He flung his arms around my chest tightly again, "Terra! This is scary, I don't get it and I want to get Ven back and go home!"

My heart melted at my little brother's innocence and I hugged him back. Roxas was never this vulnerable, so seeing him like this was just another reminder of how crazy and awful things were. He trembled there, hugging me and for a few moments, no one dared to speak up as the crowd of people watching us slowly started to thin out as everyone went back to their normal orders of business. Zelda was the first one to speak up, which annoyed me a lot because she had the audacity to question a kid who was on the verge of a breakdown, "So, Roxas, you met the watcher of time?"

Roxas sniffled softly before pulling back out of the hug, "What of what?"

Zelda repeated it again, slower this time, which really bothered me, like she thought there was something wrong with his mind, "The watcher of time."

Roxas tilted his head to the side for a moment, his normal curious light demeanor returning, "Do you mean Luxord? Yeah, I met him, he's really nice," I started to distract myself from the next long conversation by staring off into the crowd and tracing the faces of the people like I was trying to find someone I knew in a crowd at a concert, "but he's a bit confusing…"

I ignored the rest of Roxas's short conversation with Zelda as they discussed the guy named 'Luxord' and kept on tracing the faces in the crowd until I saw one that I couldn't see, because her face was hidden save her pale face and bright blue eyes. I stared at the girl in the hood, knowing perfectly well it was the girl from earlier. She said nothing, but she just stared at me for a few seconds before running back down the cobblestone road. I frowned for a second before running back after her, "Hey, wait!"

I heard several surprised sounds from the people behind me, but I kept chasing her threw the crowd. She weaved her way in between people expertly while I kept stumbling and nearly crashing into other people, trying desperately to catch up with her.

I don't know what made me keep chasing her, I really don't. All I knew was the one thing I really wanted to know from her:

_ Who are you?_

I chased her down the road until she made a swift turn into an alleyway. I ran after her down the thin passage and managed to grab her left hand in mine, stopping her in her tracks. I asked, "Come on, wait up. Who are you?"

She slowly said, "Terra, please let go of my arm."

"How do you know my name," I asked calmly, trying not to scare her as I felt her pale hand shivering in my grip.

She stood there silently for a moment before saying, "Alright, fine. But you have to promise that you can't tell anyone you saw me… Not even myself."

I was still wondering what she meant when I let go of her arm so she could throw back her hood. She stood still for a second letting the image sink into my mind, "Hello, Terra."

My eyes widened in shock and a large part of me was commanding me to hug her tightly, but I couldn't get my body to move. All I could do was stand there and stutter like a complete idiot, "A-aqua…"

Aqua smiled slightly, but there was something wrong with her, I could tell. Her eyes were sparkling and overly reflective and she was holding back tears. I frowned, "Are you okay?"

She trembled and took a step away from me, like she was afraid of me. I took a step closer to her and gently put my hand on her cheek, "What happened?"

She looked down at her feet like she couldn't bear to keep up eye contact with me. I felt something wet under my hand and noticed that the tears which had been threatening to fall were now streaming down her face. My heart melted at the sight and she finally spoke up, "I had to see you, one more time… I didn't want you to be gone forever. I just wanted you back for a few moments."

I didn't understand what she was talking about. She put her hand over mine and gently took it off of her face. I didn't try to stop her. I just stared at her, bewildered and nearly immobilized by confusion, "Wait, Aqua!"

She turned away from me and I saw a bright white light, a temporal portal flash open in front of her, "I'm sorry. Someday… someday you'll understand. Just not now."

She entered it and it vanished into oblivion, taking her away from me again.

I stared at the place where she'd disappeared again, still holding up my hand like I was reaching for her, "Wait… Don't leave me again."

I growled and punched one of the wooden walls of a cabin next to me, gritting my teeth as blood started to flow out of my knuckles. I didn't stop though, I punched it with my other hand, ignoring the cuts and bruises forming on my knuckles. I kept up like that until I had left a bloody dent in the wood and splinters were caught in my hands. I stared at my hands for a moment, wincing from my stupid decision as the others ran into the alley with me. Roxas slowly asked, "Terra? Are you okay?"

I just shook my head and Link was the first one to notice my hands, _what happened to your hands?_

I didn't reply for a moment, putting my head down and finally noticing the blood pulsing out of my hands and the tiny spots were splinters were embedded deep in my skin, "It's nothing, really, Link, I'm fine."

He crossed his arms and gave me a look that clearly said otherwise. Kairi frowned and took one of my hands into her smaller ones, uncurling my fingers gently. She didn't open her mouth but I heard her voice, _No, you're not fine, Terra! You hurt yourself, you idiot! Ugh… I can't tell him that._

I blinked in surprise as I realized I was hearing her thoughts played out loud in my head even though her mouth wasn't moving, "It's fine Kairi… I'm sorry… I just…"

Kairi's eyes widened in shock, "Y-you just read my mind."

_Get used to it, _Link thought and I chuckled at his thought, trying to pick some of the splinters out of my crimson stained hands.

Kairi looked like she was about to pass out, and Roxas said, "Oh! Oh! You can read minds? That's so awesome, what am I thinking about?"

I rubbed my temples, my head was starting to ache and I didn't know why. For some reason, over and over in my head I kept on hearing Roxas say, _tacos, tacos, tacos, tacos, tacos!_

I blinked, the pain in my temples starting to grow stronger than the pain in my hands. Luckily for me, Zelda spoke up, "Guys, don't force Terra to overextend his powers, it'll make him experience a lot of pain."

"Oh," Roxas muttered softly, "Sorry."

Zelda frowned at me, "It's your own fault that you got hurt, Terra, and we don't have anything to help your hands."

"Great," I muttered, pulling my hand up so I could try to pick some more wood splinters out of it.

Kairi pouted at me, which was somewhat hilarious in my opinion because Kairi **never** gets mad at anyone, she's too much of a goody-two shoes for that, "Why would you even hurt yourself like that?"

I quietly admitted, "I saw Aqua… But she… I…"

I couldn't finish what I was going to say, I had no words to explain what had just happened to me. Zelda frowned, "Terra, it was probably just a witch trying to take the guise of Aqua and trick you into hurting yourself, like you did."

That statement seemed reasonable enough, I mean, I'd seen so many insane things and so much crazy stuff had happened to me that day alone that I was almost ready to believe what she was telling me, "I guess."

But in my heart, I knew she was wrong. It was Aqua. It had to be.

Roxas led our little group back out into the bustling Hyrule streets and said, "So, Luxord brought me here through this terminal thing, and I don't remember what it was called."

Zelda softly suggested, "The terminal of time?"

He nodded, smiling, "Yeah, that's right; that was it!"

"Did he mention how to get back," Kairi asked.

He shook his head, "No, but I came in from right outside of town. Maybe the passage back will be there too."

Zelda nodded, "You're a smart kid and you're probably right."

I said, "Really Zelda, you don't know this?"

She crossed her arms over her chest, annoyed with me again, "Well I'm sorry I'm not omnipotent. Do you want me to tell you what that means too?"

I growled slightly, "I'm nineteen years old, I know what omnipotent means."

Roxas led us out of town, occasionally glancing back at me, though I wasn't sure whether it was to check if I was okay or to be sure that my temper was starting to simmer down a bit. He stood on the end of the path where the town turned back into a thick forest, with a thin winding dirt path leading off into the thick undergrowth of the woods, "Well, I came in from here, so I guess that I'll be able to come back from here too."

There was a bright flash like lightning had struck even though the sky was clear and I had to turn away and close my eyes for a moment, because the light was far too bright. I blinked the spots out of my eyes, staring at the new temporal portal that had opened inches from my face. A voice came out of it, and once again, I didn't recognize it, "Roxas!"

Roxas smiled upon hearing it and we all looked at him curiously, "Luxord."

He ran right into the light. Kairi glanced at me across the light before nodding slowly and walking into it as he had. Zelda cracked her knuckles, "Alright then, you two, I'm following them, feel free to join me anytime you want to."

Kairi blinked in surprise and the light sparkled and started to fade in front of her and she jumped into it quickly because she didn't want it to fade without her. I didn't trust it though. The last time I stepped into one of those I woke up tied up with people who wanted to _cut my foot off._

If you don't think anything's wrong with that statement, you'd better go back and read it again, because I don't think that happens to people on a regular basis.

I let the light fading before realizing, once again, what a stupid decision that was as I had now pretty much abandoned myself alone in the thirteenth century. I sighed, "Well, that's just great. Just great…"

I stood there for a second, looking left and right for any sign of a portal, but all I could sense was the forest, the light sound of birds chirping to one another across branches high above my head, and the smell of pine needles and leaves. "Now what am I supposed to do," I muttered.

A malignant voice from behind me answered, "You can always try and ask for directions…"

I felt my blade materialize in my hand against my will and I turned around quickly, only to be greeted by a sound like rushing wind and empty air in front of me. I turned again quickly to where I was originally facing, seeing no one there. I did another 360 turn, confused and wondering who was talking to me. The disembodied voice hit my ears again, "Too slow."

I felt something sharp prick my neck and looked down to see a black blade pressing into my neck, eliciting several drops of blood from the tiny slit it made. The weapon itself looked a bit similar to my own in the way that it almost looked like a hybrid between a sword and a key, but this one was much darker, much shorter, and much sharper than my own. I slowly felt my own weapon dissipate into thin air at the worst possible time and decided that if I couldn't fight him, then I might as well reason with him, "Who are you?"

"The name's Vanitas," he said calmly and I felt the cold steel press a little deeper into the small wound he had made in my neck, "Now then… Lord Ganondorf said he needed to bring you back. He needs a thirteenth one after all, so I can't kill you."

_Thirteenth, a thirteenth what?_ I wondered silently, _well… If it has to do with that Ganondorf guy, than I'm sure it's not good news._

I asked him a similar question to my previous thought, "Thirteenth what, exactly?"

Vanitas released a small dark chuckle before replying, "I suppose you'll find out soon enough."

I heard a voice from behind him stop him from doing anything else, "Stop, Vanitas-"

Another nearly identical voice cut the original one off, "-What's the fun in taking him now?"

Vanitas growled and the pressure was suddenly released from my neck, "Kotake, Koume, you're not supposed to be interfering with Lord Ganondorf's plans."

I turned quickly, getting a glimpse of Vanitas, whose features were hidden from me under a shiny black mask and then of the two girls he'd been talking to. There were two girls standing a little ways down behind Vanitas, and both of them had their arms crossed across their chests, annoyed. I couldn't tell how old they were, but I could tell from the wrinkles starting to form on their faces that they weren't young either. Kotake had ice blue hair and light blue eyes with flecks of gold in them while Koume had scarlet hair and golden eyes with small scarlet flecks in them. Both were wearing matching blue dresses and I had a feeling it would be hard to remember which twin was which if you didn't know them well enough. I frowned, "What do you want?"

"We want what little Vani said that we want," Koume replied with a somewhat disturbing chuckle.

Vanitas growled, his black gloved hands tightening into fists for a moment, "I told you not to call me Vani!"

That was when I decided to make a run for it away from the argumentative villains. I got about three yards away before I couldn't take another step. I looked down to find that my feet were sinking into the ground. I tried to pull myself out, but I realized quickly that it was futile; it was like trying to struggle your way out of quicksand, the more you move, the faster you sink. I was caught up to my knees when Koume spoke again, "See, isn't it more fun this way, Vani?"

Vanitas was silent and he shook his head, "This goes against my orders."

I was busy frantically trying to pull my way out of the ground which was slowly absorbing me, and I didn't pay attention to the rest of their conversation, now I wish I would have…

Kotake spoke this time, and her laugh was just as crooked and disturbing as her sister's was, "Oh, come on, Vanitas, we all know you're loyal to someone else."

Vanitas frowned, "What I do is what I do to gather the thirteen. Who I serve when I do that is none of your concern. Now, let him out so we can bring him back with us!"

Koume and Kotake spoke simultaneously, "Let me think about that for a second… Um… no."

_Shit…_ I thought, feeling even more panicked in my situation I was stuck up to my waist and it was going faster and faster as I got farther down, like the world was trying to swallow me whole. I released an exasperated sound and managed to reach my left hand up to try and grab for something while my right hand vanished into the ground beneath me. I heard Kotake laugh again and she wandered over in front of me, giving me a view of her legs and not much else above that. She pressed a long nail under my chin, lifting up my head so I could look up at her. The process of me being sucked into the ground paused and I couldn't feel any part of my body that vanished beneath the surface of the soil, "Hello there little boy."

She traced down my chin to my neck, leaving a thin bloody slit wherever her small claws traveled on my skin, "So, your name is Terra, huh," I only struggled trying to dig myself out of the position I was stuck in, half submerged in the ground, "Our leader has big plans for you, but I think we should at least let you hope that you have a chance to change your own destiny. There is no true despair without hope, after all."

Koume wandered in front of me, kneeling down so that my face was inches away from hers uncomfortably. She smirked, "Yes, of course you think that you'll get home safely after this, don't you?"

The movement started again, pulling me under at a much slower rate than before, and this time, I felt it get harder to breathe as nearly my entire torso was pulled into the ground under me. Kotake let go of my chin, chuckling slightly, "You'll be the first one to fall. And you'll be taking her with you."

I didn't quite process what she was saying; I was trying to concentrate on keeping any part of me that I could out of the ground, even though I knew it was practically futile. I stared forward, trying to understand what they were saying to me as I really couldn't handle any more confusion in my life today. I slowly sunk in over my head, only to find that I couldn't breathe. There was no air for me under the ground and I prayed that someone, anyone would take my hand above the ground and save me from this fate of being buried alive in my own element. As I felt myself getting more lightheaded and the rest of my arm started to vanish into the earth, I felt a gloved hand grasp mine tightly, _Vanitas? Why would Vanitas be helping me?_

I heard him shouting, though it sounded like he was on the other end of the Lincoln Tunnel whispering at me from how muffled it was. I couldn't understand the rest of the argument he had with the two witches above my head, but I know it ended abruptly with Vanitas dropping my hand and letting me fully vanish beneath the surface.

I felt my mouth open in a futile attempt to breathe but the crushing darkness around me had no air whatsoever. I slowly felt my eyes slip shut as I stayed there, buried not-so-alive.

My dark trance was stopped a long while later by the feeling of air rushing through my lungs. I felt my senses slowly start to come back on, like an old computer that takes a lot of time to reboot after a random shutdown. I could feel I was lying on a cold hard floor when I regained consciousness and I prayed that this was home, or Aqua's house, even _a prison cell _and that I wasn't dead; that this wasn't heaven. I didn't want to be dead… Not without knowing that the people I loved were okay.

The thought of being dead vanished though when I heard my little brother Roxas, "Is Terra… is he going to be okay?"

A voice I didn't recognize replied, "Don't worry Roxas; his time has yet to come."

Kairi's voice hit my ears next and I could feel that one of my hands was lifted above the rest of me, and I think they were bandaging it, "I know, but what happened to him?"

"He got attacked by some of Ganondorf's lackeys. They probably tried to kill him in the most painful ways they could possibly think of," Zelda said, and for once, it didn't sound like she completely hated me. She sounded sympathetic even.

I heard another quieter voice in my head, probably Link testing if our connection was still intact, _I wonder if you can hear me while you're like this. Probably not… But… Please wake up soon. We need to find the others…_

I finally managed to get my mouth open, and suddenly all of the pain hit me at once. I groaned softly, and I heard several voices gasp in surprise. I managed to whisper, "W-where… Where am I?"

My eyes still wouldn't open, so I had to rely on trusting the people around me, which I wasn't quite ready to do. Roxas replied, "You're in the terminal of time," he paused for a second before tentatively asking, "How do you feel?"

My eyes slowly opened and I saw that there were a lot of people looking down at me, most of whom I recognized, except for a man with blonde hair who I assumed to be Luxord. I bluntly groaned, "Like crap…"

Roxas smiled above me, while everyone else was looking at him, confused, "He's going to be okay."

I slowly dragged myself up into a seated position (despite the many protests that I should be resting and not trying to sit up), "So… What's up?"

Kairi gasped in shock, "You nearly get killed by a bunch of horrible witches and all you say is 'what's up'!?"

I nodded, "Um... Yeah…"

She looked like she was about to faint, "How does Aqua deal with you?"

"She's the most amazing beautiful wonderful girl in the universe and I love her more than anything," I said sincerely, "That's how."

A slight smile twitched on Zelda's lips and Kairi said, "Aw! That's the sweetest thing I've ever heard!"

I shrugged groggily, watching as Link gently pulled some of the wood splinters out of my left hand. My right hand was already wrapped in thin gauze which covered the self-caused wounds. Luxord frowned at me, "You should be more careful."

I nodded, letting Link wrap my other hand up a little too tightly, "Yeah, I guess…"

My vision was perfectly clear now and I could see the thousands of pictures on the spherical walls, and it was mesmerizing. I slowly stood up on my shaking legs, staring around at the piles of pictures on the wall, "This is amazing. Where are we?"

"You are everywhere and nowhere, you are every time and no time, you are everything and nothing," Luxord replied easily.

I frowned, completely confused and entranced by the images on the wall, "What?"

Roxas sighed, "You get used to it."

I shook my head for a minute and felt how dry and dusty my throat was for the first time, "Does anyone have any water?"

Luxord nodded and snapped his fingers, shuffling the pictures inadvertently as a small glass of water materialized in his hand, "Here," he tossed it in my general direction.

I was so surprised that he could do that I almost dropped the glass when I caught it, "…Thank you…"

I started drinking the cool liquid and everyone was staring at me again quietly. I paused, "What? Is there something in my teeth?"

There was another short awkward silence before Kairi admitted what they were thinking, "Well, no… It's just that I don't think we expected you to just be so… nice?"

I could tell she was trying to not get me angry again and I released a small laugh at that, finishing the glass and watching it vanish almost as quickly as it had appeared, "Sorry if I was kind of an asshole."

"You were," Zelda said simply.

_Ugh, and she's the one judging my personality?_

"Well yeah…" I muttered, "I can get that way around other people who I don't know. I'm not very good at trusting people and it makes me freak out over little things. I'm impatient too, but I bet you all knew that by now. Sorry."

Roxas smiled, shaking his head and I saw Link's lips curve slightly upwards. Zelda sighed and I watched her arms slowly fall to her sides, "Well, I guess you're not a _complete _ass."

I smirked and Roxas burst out laughing, "Oh thanks."

She smiled at my sarcasm, but the feeling was short lived before she went back to looking at the wall. I heard a female voice ring in my head, but I couldn't quite tell whose it was, _wow, he has a sexy voice._

I blinked in surprise, "Alright, who's having naughty thoughts about me? I can hear you."

No one responded and whichever one of them never admitted their thoughts. Luxord changed the subject discretely, "Now, who do we want to find first?"

Everyone said the names at the same time, and Luxord looked slightly put off, "Organization builds cities, but disorganization only destroys them. Now I ask you, who would you like to find first?"

There was a long moment of silence before I heard Roxas and Kairi start to bicker behind me, both complaining that they wanted their friends back first. I looked away from the argument, I'd had enough stress today to last a life time, I didn't need to argue with anyone else. Instead, I distracted myself by scanning the pictures on the wall and seeing which faces I recognized. There was one of the vice president, and an Olympic athlete, and the stuffy lady who'd had way too many face lifts from the news, and one of the baby twins that lived down the street…

And there was the one I was looking for without even realizing it, shoved into a huge pile near the bottom, but I'd recognize that face anywhere. I whispered the name softly, touching the wall where the picture was, "Aqua…"

Everyone around me paused mid-argument, finally taking notice of me and what I was doing. No one spoke up for a moment, just staring at me as I gently pressed my hand against the tile with flashing images of the girl I loved. I stared at the pictures as they flashed by, reliving the memories that I'd been a part of, the time where we went to Dairy Queen and she somehow got ice cream on her forehead, when she danced with me at Junior prom…

Now she was gone… I shook it off… No. Somewhere, sometime, she was alive. She had to be. I don't know how I'd live if she was gone.

I stared at the pictures barely noticing when Luxord spoke up, "Well, look at you. Terra's found our compromise."

"What do you mean," Kairi asked.

_Huh? _, Link thought, confused.

"She's with Sora and Riku," Luxord replied, "It would seem that time has a strange tendency to bring people together after it has torn them apart."

I blinked in surprise, snapping myself out of the trance the picture had put me into and looking at Luxord, "Where is she?"

"It is not a matter of place, for in the time you live, the place does not exist," he said calmly.

"Okay fine," I said, finally taking my hand off of her picture and letting it fade into the ground, "When is she?"

Luxord frowned, "She is a thousand years before the time you were found in."

I sighed softly, "Can we please find her?"

Someone else, Kairi, finally spoke up again, "Yeah… If Sora and Riku are with her then I definitely want to meet up with her, right Link?"

Link nodded and thought, _yeah… Definitely. It just feels a little wrong to mess with history. How do we know that there won't be dire consequences to our actions?_

Roxas spoke up softly, shuffling his way over to me and clinging onto my arm again like he was a little kid and I was walking him through New York city, "Well what about Ven? Is he with them?"

"Who's Ven," Zelda asked curiously.

"He's my twin," Roxas said, sounding innocent and tired and breaking my heart all over again, "I hope he's okay."

I messed up his hair, "He'll be fine."

Roxas playfully swatted my hand away, "Hey! Cut it out!"

I smirked, "It's going to be okay, Roxas. After all, you found me. It's only a matter of time before we all get back together."

Luxord cleared his throat loudly interrupting our brotherly moment and gesturing to another bright glowing portal that had appeared next to him, "I'm sorry to ruin your Kodak moment, but if you please, you're friends await you behind the portal."

Kairi and Link ran into it almost instantly, Roxas chasing after them, "Wait up!"

Zelda sighed and ran after them, "Guys! Slow down, we don't even know where we're going yet!"

I stood there another long moment, staring into the light and listening to the mixed voices whispering from it, calling me in.

Luxord frowned at me, "Aren't you going to follow them Terra? You wouldn't want to assimilate with your own element due to the wrongdoings of witches again would you?"

I replied, "No I," I froze for a moment, contemplating how to tell him this, "When I was back in Zelda's time I met up with Aqua for a little while. She almost seemed scared of me. Was something… Did I do something wrong?"

"Not yet, Terra, not yet," Luxord replied calmly.

I whipped my head around to face him so fast I nearly got whiplash, "What do you mean 'Not yet'?"

"Spoilers…"

"What," I asked, annoyed.

"Let's just say the Aqua you saw was from the future," he replied, "Now go!"

I tried to say "But what about-"

"Go!"

He pushed me into the light and I fell away from the terminal and the answers I was searching for, back into more confusion. I had a prayer though, _don't let him be right, please don't let him be right, the way she acted wasn't right…_

**Chapter 5 is done! Hallelujah! **

** OH MY GOSH, this literally took me two months to write… Sorry, I've been busy and writing about a paragraph a day… **

** Thanks to Tatltails and CrazyBeverly96 for reviewing!**

** I promise I'll try to get six out faster… Really I'll try. School's been busy.**

** Peace!**

** -Pikachu203**


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6 – The sage of water**

** Here's chapter 6, originally part 2 of chapter 5, but like I said, I felt like it would never get out on the website if I just kept writing so I cut it off at the halfway point… Wow, to think I wanted to make this one whole chapter, and I was torn on whether or not to split this chapter apart as well…**

** Finally some romance is in this chapter! Well, at least for the KH pairings that is, but don't worry Zelink will get some time in the spotlight soon, that pairing just takes a while to develop.**

** I put something new in here, so I have a MAJOR warning for all of you: there will be a character death explicitly written in this chapter, so, proceed with caution. Oh, and to my friend CrazyBeverly96 who practically beta-reads this, no I have not shown you this one yet. The one she has seen the plans for is a few chapters ahead of now, so expect another one whenever I get that posted.**

** Thanks to Tatltails, CrazyBeverly96, Saphire Heart, White hero, zpup1215 and Projekt-Z for reviewing! Wow, how did I get this many readers?!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts or the legend of Zelda… So, I own absolutely nothing.**

* * *

**(Riku's POV)**

I stared at the mysterious weapon in Sora's hand and reached out to touch the wide blue grip, gently grasping the black handle as he handed it to me. I stared at it, turning it over in my hands, "What is this exactly?"

Sora shrugged softly, "I don't know, but isn't it amazing?"

I nearly sighed out loud, _this guy…_ I handed it back to him carefully, trying not to cut myself on the large teeth of the key… no, a sword… Okay, so I didn't know what it was, but neither did Sora.

I turned to Aqua to see she was sighing and taking off her shoes, one of them had a heel that had been shattered into thousands of tiny shards. I asked, "Are you okay? I'm sorry about your shoes…"

She nodded, stepping onto the stone covered ground with her bare feet and light blue painted toe nails, "Yeah, I'm fine. The shoes were too tight anyway."

I shrugged, "Sora? How are you doing?"

Sora was too preoccupied with sparring with thin air gracelessly, and nearly tripping over his own feet to answer me, but I figured that if he had enough energy to be his normal random self it meant that he was doing okay. I shook my head, turning to the gigantic blue doors to the castle of Radiant Garden.

I could hear the two of them following me, and a little bit above my head was a huge doorbell, but I opted against pushing it and just knocked on the door loudly. We waited for a few minutes before Sora got impatient and started jumping up and down, banging his fist against the doorbell incessantly until the large doors creaked slightly on their hinges and began to open out towards us.

They stopped at about a forty five degree angle, revealing two guards of sort standing in the hallway. The one on the right had a long ponytail of black tightly wound dreadlocks and blue eyes that had tiny hints of lavender on the edges. He held a long blue lance calmly at his side; and across from him was another tall man with a stern emotionless countenance. He had orange hair that was styled upwards so it almost looked like a curly flame. He on the other hand was holding a large golden axe. Both of them were dressed in black matching uniforms, buttoned with hundreds of tiny gold buttons up the front like they were bellhops at old hotels. The one on the right said, "You only have to ring the bell once, the sound is audible, we can hear you…"

Sora scratched the back of his head awkwardly, "Can we come in?"

The one on the left side asked, "Do you have an appointment with the King?"

"No," I replied curtly, trying to make this process go faster, because I needed an explanation of what the hell was actually going on here.

The one on the right shortly said, "Then I'm afraid I cannot let you in. King Ansem does not have time for meddling children. Get out of here you insolent little brats!"

Somehow, the cutting tone of his statement made it sound like a threat, even though his words would better be seen on an English paper.

Aqua put one hand on her right hip, "Aw, come on. Maybe _I'll_ give you something special if you let us in."

The one on the right slowly let his eyes travel up and down the body of the girl in front of him, making me want to smack that pervert across the face and teach him a lesson about not being sexist. He glanced at the other guard for a moment, not letting his eyes leave the girl afterwards, "Aeleus? What do you think we should do?"

Aeleus shrugged, and waited a long moment before speaking again, "I think it's a pretty good deal, Dilan."

Dilan nodded his agreement, "I couldn't agree more. Why don't you three head on in?"

As we were walking through I heard him stop Aqua for a second at the door and whisper something at her. Whatever he said, her face was bright red afterwards when she came down the hallway after us. As soon as we were out of earshot of the two guards Sora laughed so hard he nearly fell down, while somehow still managing to keep a grip on his weapon, and I frowned, "You shouldn't have said that Aqua…"

She shrugged, "Whatever, it's not like I intend to actually follow through with what I said…"

I sighed, "Seriously though, you shouldn't do stuff like that, you might get caught one day."

She smirked and stifled a laugh, "Please, Riku, if I can handle killing a bunch of monsters in heels then I can definitely knock out those two barefoot."

I wasn't so sure about that, but I knew better than to say no and get her angry at me. That was something I was aiming to avoid at all costs. Sora finally brought himself out of his hysterics; standing up with his hands crossed behind his head, "Yeah Riku," Aqua can handle herself."

Aqua smiled and rubbed his hair affectionately, making him smile, "Good Sora."

I sighed, walking on ahead, "C'mon guys, we don't have time for this. We need to find that Ansem guy and get out of here as soon as we can."

I heard the two of them fall into a steady pace behind me and started off down the hall. The walls were plated with copper and copper colored pipes of various sizes ran in zig-zagging patterns along the surface of the wall. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a maze in there, you would come to a cross roads, pick a way to go and eventually come to another fork in the path where you had to make yet another decision. After about ten minutes of that I had a feeling that we were going around in giant circles, but there was no way I could tell because there were no landmarks around other than the occasional closed door in the wall. I heard Sora stop behind me at one point and he said, "Hey, Aqua, come on, we have to keep moving."

I turned around to see that Sora was right, she had stopped in the middle of the hallway, staring down a branching passageway to her right. If life had a musical soundtrack, now would be the time to play a slightly creepy minor song on the piano. She didn't reply, so I called out her name this time, "Aqua!"

She turned to us, and there was a strange bright light behind her eyes that seemed to fade when she did, "Oh, Riku…"

Something about how detached she was from reality made me nervous. I guess she deserved to be distracted, somewhere far away from us in both time and space the boy she loved was being tried for killing her and here she was alive, but still we needed to concentrate on getting out of here, and that's all we needed to do. I sighed in exasperation, "Come on, Aqua, we have to go."

She nodded in a slow, strange way, "Right."

Sora and I continued walking, but we didn't check again to see if Aqua was still following us. It took another ten minutes of walking to reach a large gold plated door adorned with a plaque that read "_Ansem's Study_". I slowly reached out to knock on the door, only to be cut off by someone's booming voice saying, "Come in."

Sora shuddered, "How did he hear us?"

The voice hit the air again, "I said come in."

I tentatively pushed the door open to see a man with shoulder length blonde hair and a blonde beard with a thin mustache. He frowned, looking up at us before returning to staring at the scroll of paper under his nose. He put it back down on his desk feeling more comfortable in his position before looking up at us with tired golden eyes, "Yes?"

Sora was still slightly frightened from him, but I spoke up, still annoyed, "Are you Ansem?"

He nodded calmly, writing his signature with a flourish of a feather quill, "I figured you would have guessed that from the name on the door. And I assume that you two are Sora and Riku?"

Sora gasped, and I didn't let my surprise show, "How did you know that sir?"

He shrugged, "I know more than you think. My methods are none of your concern," he glanced around the room and then at both of us again, "Isn't there supposed to be a young lady here with you?"

Our eyes widened and we looked where Aqua had been walking behind us a moment earlier. Sora called out her name loudly, "Aqua?"

I groaned, "Oh great… We already lost someone wandering around here."

Ansem frowned, rubbing his small little beard, "I wouldn't call her lost just yet."

Sora tilted his head slightly to the side like a curious little kid asking their older sibling a question, "What do you mean?"

"You'll find out eventually," Ansem waved off the matter like it didn't hold any significance, "Now, then, you were here to get some answers, weren't you?"

He was beginning to make me uncomfortable, but I couldn't stop myself from telling the truth, "Yes, we came to figure out where we are and what's going on here."

"Then allow me to explain," he began….

After Ansem's long speech and confusing explanation I had one thing left to ask, "So what if anything is going to happen to us that's… bad, is there any way to stop it?"

Ansem nodded, "Time does not travel in a linear set direction. Life is full of choices, and alternate time lines are created by the people in the situations making different decisions. These time lines shatter and scatter, some running parallel to one another and others tearing away from the original line, forming a complex spider web of choices. You are in charge of your own future."

_Wow, that was pretty deep…_

Sora spoke up next, "But, if we do something we regret, can we go back and fix it?"

He frowned, "Now that, causing paradoxes, is far more complicated than your previous point. Some will change nothing. Others will change everything. For all you know, you could step on a butterfly in ancient times and never be born. Though you can move around small things, you must never mess with destiny. That means no causing wars, stopping them from happening, killing people or bringing them back to life, and there are so many more than I could name. Paradoxes like these could cause cataclysmic reactions to happen in the future. It's better to just stay away from causing paradoxes in general."

I shook my head, "This is so confusing."

Ansem sighed, running a hand through his hair tiredly, "I know it's confusing, and I'm sorry that you two were brought into this."

I sighed, "Well, there's nothing you can do about that. We just need to find Aqua and go home."

Ansem shook his head, rubbing his beard, "I'm sorry, but you two won't be the ones to find Aqua."

I frowned at him, slightly annoyed at that but still maintaining my composure like I normally did, "What do you mean that we can't find her?"

He frowned, "No, you two shouldn't be the ones to find her, she needs to have the one she loves find her."

I was going to respond when his brow furrowed like he was deep in thought, "Unless this is the reality where Terra doesn't find her in time and your clone murders her…"

I was confused as all hell's get out at that point, "Wait, what? What do you mean I have a clone?"

Ansem shook himself out of his daze, "I'm sorry, I really shouldn't be telling you these things. You see, nothing is set in stone until it happens. Well, actually I suppose that's not true, for not every decision will lead to multiple outcomes. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, we just cannot succeed at our goals. Sometimes people have to die. This is not such a case. The author is still very short into his writings."

"I don't understand," I replied, "What author?"

He sighed, "Once again, I really shouldn't be telling you these things. You should, however, go outside and see who's waiting for you. Kairi is there, and I believe that she's with some people who may know the answers you seek."

Sora shook his head, yawning, "What about Kairi?"

He stretched awkwardly and I muttered, "Please tell me that you haven't been asleep this whole time."

"Oh, okay, I won't tell you then," Sora replied.

I sighed in exasperation.

_Little known fact about Sora: He can sleep with his eyes open._

"Let's get out of here, Sora. We're obviously not any better off staying here," I said calmly, starting to drag him out of the room and not even bothering to say goodbye to Ansem.

He hadn't helped us very much, after all. All he'd done was confuse us with his story about some dumb fairytale that had nothing to do with us. Sora shouted," Bye," as I pulled him away from the room.

As soon as we'd turned down the next passage I sighed, "Great, we still don't have any answers. All we did is waste time and lose Aqua.''

Sora managed to wriggle free of my grasp. He pouted innocently, twilling with his thumbs and letting his eyes travel all over the room , like he couldn't focus on one thing at a time, "Oh, come on, Riku. He tried to help us."

I scratched the back of my head, "Well, sure. He did try to help us, but we still don't know why we're here or how we got here."

Sora sighed and nodded in agreement, "I guess you're right, but he did try."

I sighed, "Okay, so he told us a fairytale. It has nothing to do with us. Sure it's great that Link's the 'hero of time'. I'm happy for him. I'm happy he's helping solve the world's issues against that Ganondorf guy… But what I want to know is why the two of us are here. What do you and I have to do with this?"

Sora froze, looking like he wanted to say something for a moment, opening his mouth and closing it a couple times before saying, "I don't know… Why are we here?"

I frowned, "That's exactly what I'm asking."

We continued the rest of the walk in an awkward silence, with Sora jittering uncomfortably. We finally reached the front of the palace again after what felt like an eternity wandering around in that labyrinth of a castle before escaping out the front enterance, which was surprisingly ajar, due to the guard on duty, Dilan, dozing off right outside the door.

I didn't have much time to wonder what we were supposed to be doing now, or if Ansem even knew what he was talking about when he told us his little 'fairytale'. That was, my time was limited to until the moment a blinding light fell right out of the sky, like a star crashing down from the heavens and getting significantly brighter and bigger as it neared us.

It smacked into the ground at a high speed, flashing so brightly that I had to look away from it for a second, and when I looked back where the light had crashed, it was merely an orb of silver light, like before in the one that had sucked Sora and me back into the past.

Surprisingly, a kid who lived down the street from me, Roxas, was the first to exit, shaking his head and blinking a lot like he'd just had his school picture taken, "Darn, that was another one of those dumb falling portals."

He was followed soon by Link and some other girl who I didn't recognize. Link looked disoriented, shaking his head and stumbling a bit in the steps he took, while the girl simply shook out her long brown hair and looked unfazed by the time travel that had just taken place. Sora smiled and started running down the stairs to meet them, only to stop so abruptly he nearly fell down the rest of the stairs when the next time traveler appeared from the portal. My eyes widened, "Kairi?"

* * *

**(Sora's POV)**

I stopped dead in my tracks when she came out of the portal, smiling still and brushing a hand through her tangled red hair, "Geez, is it always that rough, Zelda?"

Zelda, the brunette girl replied simply, "Not normally, but with bigger jumps in time like the millennia we just jumped, temporal portals have a tendency to manifest themselves in slightly more violent manners…"

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, and I didn't care. There was something… someone, much more important standing there with her. I shouted out, "Kairi!"

I ran down towards her, not taking notice of the shock on everyone's faces. She smiled brightly, running at me and meeting me in the middle, "Sora!"

We crashed together awkwardly in the middle and I wrapped my arms around her quickly, but it did little from stopping us from falling back down onto the smooth stones. She laughed as we did, hugging me back, both of us ignoring the slight stinging pain that came from the fall.

She smiled, "It's so great to see you again."

I kissed her cheek happily, "I thought you were gone…"

She blushed slightly and the two of us pulled up off of the ground, "I was never gone, Sora. You shouldn't worry about it."

I nodded, "I guess so…"

After saying that, a final traveler through time entered into our time through the portal. Terra shook his head, rubbing at his temples as he exited, "Geez… That one was almost as rough as the witches."

That was an incredibly awkward moment, "Um… Hi."

He looked over the people who had exited the portal with him, then at Kairi and me, and then at Riku who was running down the stairs towards us before asking, "Where is she?"

Oh… That's what he was looking for...

Riku ran over to us, and he and Kairi hugged next to me. I finally got a closer look at the people who had escaped the portal, though the light outside was quickly fading and the portal disappearing wasn't helping much. I asked Terra, "Dude, what happened to your face?"

He shook his head, "Never mind that."

I nodded, "Um… well…"

Riku looked over towards Zelda and Link, who were just glancing at one another awkwardly every once in a while during our conversation, "Who's the new girl?"

She walked forward with a strange grace to her steps, like someone who ruled the world, or at least thought that they did, "My name is Princess Zelda. And you are?"

"Sora," I replied, smiling, "and this is Riku."

"Oh, so you're one of the ones who we were looking for," she said.

I nodded, and Kairi had come back over to me, "I guess so. We were just looking for Kairi… Link, how did you even get here?"

Link shrugged and waved at Kairi, who happily smiled back. Kairi laughed, "It's so great to see you guys!"

Roxas stood awkwardly to the side during this conversation, shuffling his feet and looking around, like he was expecting more people we knew to jump out of the bushes or something.

The air of the reunion was broken up by Terra walking off towards to town. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to find Aqua," he said calmly, not turning around, "She's obviously not here."

I tried to protest, "We can just go as a –"

"I don't care," he cut me off, sounding deadly serious, "I'll leave you all be, just let me do this, okay? I'm not going to be able to rest until I know she's safe."

No one protested that time. We watched him wander away, trying to find out where she'd gone.

* * *

**(Aqua's POV)**

**(A bit earlier…)**

I walked a little bit behind Sora and Riku through the labyrinth. I stared off into space behind them, ignoring what they were talking about and instead worrying about Terra. He was in the future somewhere, going through trials and tribulations, and maybe even dying because I was here. I had to find him. I had to get back to him. He needed me to be there to tell them he wasn't crazy, awful, or evil. They needed to know who he really was, a wonderful person who just needed to be opened up a bit to see the beauty in him.

I nearly walked into a wall because I was so distracted by my daydreams. I shook it off and followed Sora and Riku down the next hallway. I tried to keep myself distracted by looking up and down the hallways for the door that would lead us to Ansem, and to our answers… But unfortunately I found myself getting distracted once again…

Except this time it was something far more real. There was a bright orange light glowing down at the end of a hallway, and though I had a short conversation with Sora, I was so entranced by it that I don't remember what it was about. The two of them moved on without me, and I was stuck there, staring at it. I walked closer to it, staring into it as it seemed to entrance me. I reached out towards it, though something inside me was holding me back. That was, of course until I was suddenly sucked into the portal with the force of a black hole. I shrieked as it sucked me in, but no one seemed to hear me.

I fell down through a dark passageway, hearing a muffled voice screaming around me, but I couldn't recognize it. I felt my body roughly smack down against stone floors and I blinked my eyes in surprise at the scenery around me. I definitely wasn't in the hallway filled labyrinth of the castle anymore. Instead, I was in a room that was completely cylindrical, the celling that was barely visible because it was so high above me, was made of glass panes that were perfectly synthesized into one another, and they appeared to be made of a single gigantic circular pane. The walls were moss covered cobblestones that were crumbling in some areas, showing the age of the room. There were, also, no visible exits to the room, and I shook my head, trying to get my bearings. I looked in front of me and there was a large collection of shattered shards of what appeared to be shiny yellow crystals.

Curiously, I walked up to the shattered remains of the crystal, picking up one, careful not to cut myself on the sharp edges, "Where did this come from?"

Behind me, a strangely robotic voice hit the air, "It came from when she escaped."

I turned around, surprised as I thought that I was alone in this place, "Who are you?"

She smiled. The girl I was looking at had blue skin, hair and eyes with no visible pupils. Her arms were fully hidden under her long purple and blue clothing. She was sitting on a small stone platform about three steps above the ground, and behind her, a long silver sword was stuck point down into the ground. The appearance of the sword gave me a strange feeling of foreboding which I shook off as she jumped down onto the floor. She walked over to me gracefully, like she was an inline skater on an icy lake, daintily stepping to avoid falling through the surface. Her steps were so fluid I could hardly tell she was on the ground, it almost looked like she was flying about an inch above it. Her clothing was blowing slightly as if there was a wind in the room, but there was none in there, "My name is Fi, Aqua."

Fi's lips turned upwards slightly at the edges and it showed a small smile. I asked, "How do you know me?"

"You're romantically attached to a companion. Therefore, by the fact that I naturally have knowledge of ones like me, I would know who you are, Aqua," she said in a matter of fact tone.

There was nothing haughty about her, even though she was a know-it-all, apparently. Talking to her felt like talking to a very confusing complicated computer. I frowned, "You mean Terra, right? Is he alright?"

She turned away from me, "Currently, he is physically harmed and mentally despondent. He appears to be searching for you."

I sighed, rubbing the back of my hair gently, "God… I wish I could see him."

"Oh, but you will," Fi said delicately, skating a circle around me like she was some sort of ghost, "Don't worry anymore. You two will meet. Just be careful."

"Why?" I asked softly, "If he's going to be alright, then why should I be worried about him? He'll have me back soon, won't he? We'll go home and clear everything up with the police and we'll all end up being okay."

She stopped tracing circles around me and paused, poised delicately on her toes like she was ready to start moving again at every moment, like she was programmed so that she couldn't sit still for long, "Unfortunately, that is not all that will trouble the boy. Companions always face difficulty. Some face more than others," her face turned away, "Sometimes they do not make it to the end of the journey. I should know…"

I didn't quite know how to respond to that. I quietly asked, "What do you mean?"

She shook her head, wandering back up to her pedestal, "I can't tell you everything about this. I'm sorry, but as much as I can predict, I don't know the future. Besides, if you know your future and try to change it, then you will be doomed to come to the same outcome," she stopped when she was next to the sword, ghosting one of her sleeves over it where her arm should have been over it, "as for me… The master sword and I are one. Wherever it is I must stay, and the hero of time left it here, so I cannot leave."

I frowned, "But that's not fair," I ran up after her, ghosting my fingers along the sword, "You deserve to leave here too."

I tugged on the hilt futilely in an attempt to get it out of the stone. Her hidden hand ghosted over mine, "Stop, it's alright, Aqua. You have a very strong sense of justice to want to save me, but this is my place. I have grown to accept this."

I looked at her desperately, her hand over mine felt so cold it seemed that she was already dead, "This isn't fair though…"

She smiled at my protest, shaking her head, "You are a very nice girl. I can see why he loves you. Now please, listen to me if you want to get out of here."

I frowned stubbornly and muttered, "Fine."

She sighed, "Please relax. Now, listen carefully."

I nodded tremblingly, still annoyed that I couldn't help, "Alright… I'm listening."

Fi pointed to the scattered yellow crystals on the other side of the room, "There. Your answer lies there, with the shards that were once a crystal. There is blue among the yellow, so locate it and it will lead you out. She nodded and made a gesture with her billowing sleeves, "Well, go."

I walked over and scanned the area, staring intently at the little yellow sparkles. After searching for a few moments, I reached down and picked up some of the shards, looking at them. Sure enough, there were some blue shards among the yellow. I continued to search until I found four of them there. When I picked up the final one, Fi spoke up again, "Congratulations. The triforce of courage is almost complete. One shard remains."

"I'm not sure I understand," I replied.

"You will soon," Fi said delicately, and moving far slower than she had before, she jumped down to me, and delicately put her hand over mine, and the shards glowed with a bright blue light.

I stared at them in surprise, and they soared up into the air above me. I stared at them, surprised as they vanished away from me, "What's going on here?"

"Listen, you will understand soon," Fi said kindly, "Just relax."

I was still confused by what was going on here, "Seriously, what's happening?"

"I cannot tell you, I'm afraid it's not my place to speak on that matter," she said, "I must warn you however that you need to leave here very shortly."

I didn't understand her for a moment, but then I realized my hands were sparkling slightly, and small particles of white light were fluttering off of me and into the sky. I gasped as they started to get larger, growing from the size of tiny snowflakes to much larger fluffier ones. I looked desperately at her, "Come with me!"

She shook her head, "I'm afraid that I cannot leave the Master Sword behind."

I looked around curiously. _Master Sword…? Oh! It must be that sword that Fi came from…_

The lights around me grew so that the lights were more of a torrent rather than flurries, and they had grown to the size of golf balls, making it harder and harder to see her through them, "Am I ever going to see you again?"

She shook her head, "No. Not like this at least. We will meet again, but both of us will have changed."

Somehow, her saying that made me a lot calmer, and I succumbed to the will of the light, closing my eyes and allowing it to transport me away.

I opened them again and felt disoriented, trying to figure out where exactly I was. It didn't take me long to realize that I was just standing in the lowered courtyard near the enterance to Radiant Garden. I shook my head and shuffled my feet on the flower patterned tile for a moment.

_How did I even get back here?_ I wondered to myself curiously.

I shook off a lightheaded feeling that was beginning in the back of my head and decided that the best thing to do now would be to find Sora and Riku and figure out what to do from there. I nodded to myself and was about to walk across the courtyard when a voice rang out behind me, "What, you're not noticing me?"

I turned at the sound and to my surprise saw, "Riku?"

He growled slightly at that statement. He wasn't _wearing _the same thing that he was earlier. Instead he was wearing a shirt just like Riku's but it was dark black, as were his pants. His shoes were the kind of boots that go up so high that I wondered how he even got them on, "For crying out loud! I'm different than him! Why can no one ever see that?"

_Okay, definitely not Riku… But when did Riku get a doppelganger?_

He sighed, "The name's Repliku, not Riku, alright?"

_Repliku? _

I didn't have time to ask any more questions before darkness seemed to gather in his hand, forming a sword that was curved and shaped like a demonic wing, "Well, I'm sorry, but I was ordered to come here and kill you."

_Where did that come from?! _

I shook my head and asked, "Wait, what?"

He shrugged, moving into a fighting stance, "No hard feelings, really. It's just business. Getting rid of you will help us manipulate him."

I didn't have very long to think about what he was saying before he lunged at me. My eyes widened, but I managed to dodge out of the way of his blow. Unfortunately, I didn't make it out of the way perfectly, and the blade briefly cut into my left arm, making a deep gash there. I put my hand over the slash mark in my arm, staring in shock at the dark monster who was assaulting me. He smirked, "Trying to fight, are you? Well I suppose that it wouldn't be fun to kill you unless you struggle. Wouldn't it be so much easier if you just let me kill you? It certainly won't hurt as much," he attacked me again, but this time I was prepared and I got out of the day, "Oh well. I suppose I'll enjoy tearing you into tiny little pieces."

I shook my head, staring at him as he prepared to charge at me again, "You're crazy!"

We continued like that for a few moments, him attacking and me trying to dodge out of the way of his blows and try to keep at least out of the reach of the length of his blade.

I couldn't keep up my pace though, and gradually, like a grizzly bear tracing the tracks of a salmon, trying to predict where it would swim to next so that it could come in for the kill. He was surprisingly good at tracking my movements, and I was quickly tiring from running and trying not to get slaughtered like a cheerleader in a horror movie.

I wasn't going to last, not like this at least. I couldn't fight someone who was wielding a sword with my bare hands. That was dawning on my rather quickly, and I had several new nicks in my skin from my missteps.

I turned around quickly, only to find he was charging right at me, and I was cornered in the edge of the courtyard. There was nowhere left for me to run. I put up my hands in a futile attempt to defend myself, knowing that in that moment there was nothing else I could do. I closed my eyes and waiting for the pain to come, but instead of the sharp stab I was expecting, a loud _clang_ rang out across the surrounding area.

I opened my eyes and found that there in my hands was a weapon quite like the one Sora was holding earlier. The big differences between the two was that mine was silver and blue rather than silver and gold, and mine was a lot thinner and less bulky looking. I readied it and glared at Repliku, who had taken a few steps back after our previous clash. He looked up at me in surprise, then down at the weapon, like he was taken aback for a moment. Then, to my own surprise, he smiled, "Well, well, well, what do we have here? So you're a keyblade weilder… I should've expected a curveball like this from someone as stubborn as you."

I ignored the pain of the rough stones making up the ground scratching at my feet and curiously released a single word in response, "Keyblade?"

He muttered something that sounded eerily like 'I don't have time for this' and charged at me again, but this time I was prepared to block him and force him back. He stumbled for a moment, but that was just enough time for me to parry his sword out of the way and stab him, right through his chest.

His own weapon clattered to the cobblestones, vanishing into the darkness from whence it was summoned. He looked up at me, and I was expecting to see him horrified that I'd actually managed to kill him. A large rosette of crimson blood was spreading from the wound, and several drops of it fell to the ground below, splashing quietly against them. Despite that, his features showed no pain, fear, or apprehension. In fact, he laughed. It rang through the air, and I felt horror start to pulse through my veins.

He smirked and pulled my 'keyblade' right out of his chest, tossing the now gore covered device onto the ground, where it quickly reappeared back in my hand, surprisingly clean. Something in the shape of three triangles making up a much larger triangle flashed on the back of his hand, and a small beam of light that I wouldn't have thought him capable of creating appeared in the center of his chest. Then… the blood that had spread from his wounds and onto the ground was suddenly sucked back up into his being as if nothing had even occurred.

The last traces of the injury faded away, and his blade of darkness reformed in his hand. He chuckled and pointed it at my terrified face, "Sorry, bitch, but you can't fight the power."

After that point, he seemed revitalized, like he was a completely new person. Every time I managed to scratch him, he instantaneously healed in the spots by the same weird regenerative light. I, on the other hand, was tired, scratched up, my left arm was bleeding so much that I could hardly move it, and all together felt like crap. It was not good.

He was gaining on me in the battle, and my movements were becoming slower and easier to predict again.

I ran out of the way of another one of his blasts, but this time, my foot twisted as I took a step away, and I heard a loud crack and ended up falling to the ground. The only reason I didn't die when that happened was because his blade passed right over my head.

He stood over me, smirking "You're good, but not good enough."

I closed my eyes, expecting the sword to pierce me when I heard a loud and angry shout from across the clearing, "Leave her alone!"

My eyes widened for a moment as I recognized who it belonged to, but exhaustion forced them shut a moment later.

* * *

**(Terra's POV)**

I was ready to kill Repliku. Nobody hurts Aqua. I'd destroy anyone who tried to harm her. That included him.

I punched my shoulder roughly, forcing out my armor, feeling my blade appear comfortably in my hand. I charged at him without a second thought, surrounded by a blind rage.

He dodged out of my way, looking horrified at my presence there, "You… you aren't supposed to be here!"

I growled angrily at him and attacked him again, the two of us having constant clashes with one another. I didn't even feel like myself. I was filled with some sort of weird powerful energy that made me continuously attack him, and even if I had wanted to stop, I couldn't have. I didn't want to stop, though. I wanted to see him suffer for hurting her. It was a terrible sentiment, but I was almost positive his were worse, trying to murder an innocent girl.

We continued on that way, no one showing the upper hand over one another until a voice finally yelled, "STOP!"

We froze, about to slash at one another again, and looked in the direction it was coming from. There was a young man there with silver hair that fell into his face, covering one of his eyes. He had on a long white lab coat, and he was holding a book close to his side like his life depended on it or something. His eyes were blue, but they had small golden circles around the center, that made his pupils look like they were solar eclipses. Repliku looked annoyed, "Zexion, why do you always have to ruin the fun."

Zexion spoke calmly, like a professor or a school teacher who thought they knew(and probably did know) a lot more than the person who they were lecturing did, "Our orders were to not harm them. This was a covert operation, and you've ruined it with your constant lust for swordplay."

Repliku tried to complain back to him, "But I was just trying to get him to-"

He was cut off abruptly as Zexion entered the courtyard, crossing to him and grabbing him by his left arm, "Enough. Do you want us to erase your memory again?"

He suddenly seemed horrified, a fear he hadn't shown to us in the fight, "N-no…"

"Then we'll be taking our leave," he started to drag the complaining little clone out of the area, but he stopped to say, "Oh, and sorry for any trouble we might have caused you."

I watched them leave, my temper finally calming from my ruthless outburst.

They vanished out of my view, and I slammed off my armor as quickly as I possibly could, running back to where Aqua was laid out on the ground.

I turned her over gently, holding her close. She opened her eyes faintly and asked, "Terra?"

"I'm here, just hold on, I'm going to make everything better, alright?" I looked down, trying to find out what was the worst problem she was facing right then, and saw a deep gash in her arm that was making her quickly bleed out onto the ground.

"I… I love you," she mumbled quietly as I threw off my jacket, trying to find some material I could tear easily enough to cover the gash.

I ripped the sleeve of my shirt, trying to get a piece big enough to cover her wound. I'd seen enough movies to know what she was trying to say, and I angrily replied, "You're not going to die on me. I won't let you."

A tiny smile formed on her face, and I used the fabric I had torn apart to wrap up her arm, "Still so stubborn, huh?"

I just worked on patching up her injury. She spoke again softly, "Thank you."

"Be more careful next time," I replied calmly, tracing my hand down to her ankle, which was twisted in an odd direction.

Her dress was torn from dragging around on the floor and slashes that had come from the previous battles of the day, but I was more focused on the glaring problem of her ankle bent in a strange direction with a slightly raised bump on the side. I carefully slid it back into place, feeling the fracture that had been formed there. As I did she released an acute shout of pain that made me move back up to her face frantically caressing her cheek like it might help her calm down, "Are you alright?"

She nodded slightly, it was tiny, but it was enough to show she knew what I was saying to her, "Y-yes…"

She gave another weak attempt at a smile, and I muttered, "No. You're not. Your ankle's broken."

She shivered from the brusqueness of my tone, but I, being dumb in the moment, thought she was actually feeling the chill of the evening air, and put my coat on her. She blushed at my action, and I hoisted her up off of the ground, putting one hand under her knees and the other behind her back so I could carry her properly. Her face was about as red as a tomato, but she sat up slightly and draped her right arm over my neck, still leaving her hurt arm dangling at her side, "You d-don't have to carry me."

"Yes I do," I said, nearly smiling from how adorable she looked when she was surprised, "You broke your ankle, unless we can get it fixed, I'm going to have to carry you."

She couldn't help but smile at that one, and I slowly mimicked her expression, starting to make my way across the courtyard so the two of us could get back to the others, "I don't mind it at all."

She pressed her head against my neck, closing her eyes tiredly and mumbling, "Love you…"

"I love you more."

* * *

**(Zelda's POV)**

_Where is he!?_ Ugh, I didn't like waiting like this. Maybe it was the years of having people following the orders of everything I say, but something about having people like Terra, Kairi, Riku, Sora, and even sometimes Link running around and not following every order you give them was beginning to tick me off. Yet… At the same time their behavior was somewhat intriguing to me. I'd never lived outside of my own time period, hell, I'd never even been outside my own city before. The only thing I really knew about the outside world and different time periods came from books. I shuffled my feet, hugging my own shoulders as the air started to get chilly, "Once again, does he usually just run off randomly?"

Roxas nodded, "Um… yeah, sometimes."

I rubbed my temples, "Well, why does he have to do this now? We could've been back hours ago."

He shrugged, "I don't know, he's worried I guess."

Riku looked like he was thinking about something deeply, and Sora and Kairi were sitting a little ways away from the rest of the group, talking and laughing and kissing occasionally. Link was standing next to me, which was a little weird because whenever I looked at him his face flushed and he couldn't keep up eye contact with me. I sighed, "Seriously, where is he?"

"I'm right here," his voice finally came back into our range of hearing.

I was going to say something back to him about how long he'd made us wait, but I froze, as did everyone else, when we saw the contents of his arms.

There, lying limply, was a girl who I assume was Aqua. She looked like she'd been cut at randomly with a sharp blade and her clothing had spatters of blood on it, the only place where it wasn't visible was on Terra's jacket, which he'd draped over her shoulders like some kind of shroud. A think dry trickle of blood was creeping down her arm. Her face was pale, and her eyes were closed. From this distance, she looked very, very dead.

That was probably the third time in one day I'd felt really bad for him, "Oh God…"

He looked up quietly, though he wasn't letting anyone there see what he was really feeling. Sora and Kairi returned to the group then, just as quietly as everyone else. No one really knew what to say. What _does _someone say to someone suffering that kind of loss? Roxas was the first to wander up with a little horrified look on his face, "Big brother, are you-"

He stopped himself when he got closer and laughed, "How can someone fall asleep like that?"

_What?_

The rest of us slowly crowded around them, "Sh… You're going to wake her up."

Sora, being his normal self, went back to holding Kairi's hand and loudly said, "What a relief…"

Terra sighed slightly, not responding to Sora's loud comment but to the voice that none of us could hear, "No, Link, I wouldn't let her die. If she died, I would die."

Sora's eyes widened, "Whoa! Dude, how can you talk to him? Can you read minds? That is so epic!"

Riku sighed, "Sora, not so loud…"

"Oh," Sora whispered, though even his whispers were relatively loud, "Sorry, right."

It was too late to stop it, though, he'd already woken her up. Aqua yawned, "What's going on? Where… where are we?"

She sat up a bit in his arms, pulling herself up by grabbing onto his shirt. He sighed, "I wanted to let you sleep."

She sighed, "Well, I'm awake now… Who are all these people?"

Kairi smiled, "You remember me, right? It's Kairi," she gestured to her left, "And this is Sora, and Riku, and Link."

"Wow, you guys grew up," she replied, yawning, she pointed at me lopsidedly with her left arm, "And you are?"

"Zelda," I replied, forcing a smile in this awkward crowd of strangers, "You're Aqua, right?" she nodded, and I continued, "Um… It's nice to meet you?"

She smiled, "Nice to meet you too."

She seemed strangely calm and genuine, in stark contrast to her overly impatient boyfriend… She spoke again calmly, "So, who's going to explain what's going on here, because I have no idea."

A light flashed in the corner of my vision, and it turned into a full portal in a few moments. "What's that?"

"Oh, that's a temporal portal," Roxas replied, "They're really interesting."

She shook her head, "Sounds complicated…"

"Don't worry," Terra whispered to her, "I'll explain it in the morning, I promise. Now, rest. We've all had a long day..."

I followed the rest of them out through the portal, but as I did, I wondered what it felt like to be in love. I had never been in love before, or at least I thought I hadn't. Yet, here around me were two modern day couples who thoroughly enjoyed one another's love. Sometimes I even envied them… But who would love me?

I warded off my childish daydreams about being in a fairytale as we reentered the Garden of Time. Luxord was there, and the usual introductions were made for Riku, Sora, Kairi, and Aqua(who'd fallen back asleep in Terra's arms). I didn't concentrate on their conversations though, I was still experiencing culture-shock from being thrown into modern times when I'd lived my entire life in the Middle Ages.

Luxord led all of us to another room, which was like a college dormitory, boys rooms on the left and girl's rooms on the right. There were names carved into the wood on each of them, our own names. I guessed it was to mark off where we were supposed to be living for the time being. Sora and Kairi ran off to check out their rooms first hand, happy to find television sets playing modern television shows there, while Roxas decided to take up jumping up and down on his bed. Riku just went into his room and was laying on his own bed, opening a book which was mysteriously lying there, opened to a certain page and reading it. I guessed that he was trying to distance himself from the world. That left Luxord, Terra, Aqua, and I. The four of us stood awkwardly. Luxord cleared his throat, "Ahem… I should be off now, places to go, people to moderate."

While none of us understood what he meant, we let him leave without a word. Then there were the three of us, standing in the hallway awkwardly. Terra was giving me a look that said, _wake her up, and you die._

He didn't say a word to me, but he left and put his girlfriend down on her own bed before returning. I glanced curiously in his direction, "What do you want?"

"Why do you hate me?" he asked calmly.

"W-what?" I gasped in surprise, "I don't hate you!"

"You certainly act like you do. You act like everyone else. You see me, you hear me, and you never give me a chance. You're just like everyone else…"

It hit me then. I didn't know anyone here. Maybe, I had been acting like a jerk and letting my patience run thin. Then again, so had he, "Look, I didn't mean to offend you."

"I know you didn't," he muttered, "No one ever does. People can't help but judge me as a jerk. I think that you just caught me on a bad day."

_A really bad day…_

I nodded, "I guess."

"I just don't want to be here and have everyone hate me, alright? This is a fresh start for me. I think that we shouldn't hate one another, otherwise this whole crazy journey wouldn't be any fun wouldn't it?" he explained.

I playfully shot back, "Oh, so now you believe in fairy tales?"

"This, oh no, this isn't that bad," he said, both of us chuckling a bit, "I wonder what's next. Disney characters?"

"I was betting on floating islands myself," I suggested.

He smirked and held out his hand, "So, what do you say, friends?"

I nodded, "Alright, friends."

He walked off to his own room, looking a lot lighter, like I'd just lifted twenty pounds of bricks off of his shoulders. It was awkward, but I think I felt the same way. I walked down to the end of the hallway, and the last door on the girl's side of the hallway was mine. I carefully pushed it open and examined the contents of the room. The bed was huge and soft, like it was velvet and covered with silk sheets and satin pillows, even though otherwise it appeared normal. There wasn't much else to the room. There was a light switch a bookshelf to the left of my bed, and a strange little white thin device that played music. The most remarkable thing about the room, however was my window.

I sat down on my bed, and curiously noticed it was showing a field full of sunflowers. I leaned closer to get a better look at them, wondering whether they were real in another room, or if they were just an illusion. As I did, my hand brushed against something under the covers and the window flashed, changing the image from the field of sunflowers to an underwater scene. I lifted up the covers and found a little remote with two buttons, an up arrow and a down arrow. I curiously pushed the down arrow, and the window showed me the flowers again, but when I pushed the up arrow again, I was looking at a thick forest. I clicked it several times until it showed just a moon in the sky giving the room a silver glow.

I relaxed back into the bed. and fell asleep wondering about the crazy things that would happen to us the following day.

* * *

**(Roxas's POV)**

That night I had the shortest nightmare I'd ever had. I heard a squealing sound like tires skidding on pavement. Then there was a bright flash of pure white light behind my eyes… And finally, an all too familiar scream cried out in horror and pain and was quickly cut off as I shot my eyes open, sitting up quickly in bed and ignoring the cold sweat breaking out on my forehead. I mumbled the name out loud in shock, "Ven… Where's Ven?"

I jumped out of bed and ran through the rooms, not even pausing to acknowledge Xion, who was now playing something deep and dark that might have been from the Phantom of the Opera. I ran past her and back into the ruins of Radiant Garden. I bolted through them, up the stairs and through the castle until I found the library again, searching through the little mini-maze before bursting into the terminal of time.

I panted quickly, my heart pounding in my ears as I turned on the spot, staring at all of the pictures on the wall and searching for his. _Where is it? Where is he?_

"Roxas," a voice said calmly from the door.

I looked up, my gaze meeting Luxord's icy blue eyes, "Where is he? Why can't I find him?"

I kept scanning through the pictures, moving my hands around everywhere and searching for a trace of anyone who looked even remotely similar to me. Luxord sighed and walked to my side, "I can see all that ever is, all that ever was, all that ever will be, and all that ever could be. Sometimes it pains me. Sometimes it drives me mad. This would be one of those times."

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked nervously, my movements getting more frantic, "Where's Ven?"

Luxord shook his head, "Ventus is dead."

The world froze for a moment, and my heart beat grew even faster and more defined, almost to the point where it sounded like a clock quickly ticking the seconds away. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. I didn't know what to say. I couldn't have said anything meaningful if I tried. I sunk back down onto the ground, shaking my head and feeling tears start up in my eyes, "No… No way…"

Luxord sat down next to me, "When things like this happen, we must remember to keep on living."

"How?" I choked out.

"How? What do you mean by 'How'?" he asked quietly.

"How did this happen?" I asked quietly, "How is this possible? You… You're lying!"

"I see. No one can remember what happened," Luxord said, "Time travel does tend to have a curious affect on ones state of mind and memory, specifically when one is causing an accident of this magnitude," he stopped explaining whatever it was he was talking about, "Ahem, now, Roxas, do you remember the accident?"

"Accident," I muttered quietly, "What are you talking about?"

He nodded, "I suspected as much," his eyes suddenly flashed so that there was a bright golden light shining out where the blue was, "I suppose I can show you."

He blinked once and the light exploded brightly in my eyes.

* * *

**(The flashback begins…)**

_ I blinked my eyes back open. Luxord and I were standing on a street corner and the world around us seemed to be crumbling in certain places, where the ground and the other objects which should have been there were pure white. And there was I, looking just like I normally did, running after something that was rolling down the hill in front of me._

_ I picked whatever it was off the ground and wasn't paying attention to my surroundings. Apparently… The man in the car pulling out of the driveway also wasn't paying attention to me. He smashed into me, not going insanely fast, but enough to make me collapse._

_ I gasped, staring at the scene, "No wonder I don't remember this. I was unconscious."_

_ "He's not unconscious. And that's not you," replied Luxord._

_ "N-no…"_

**(End flashback…)**

* * *

I opened my eyes, blinking a couple times and trying to get my bearings, "No… No!"

He sighed, and put his hand on my shoulder comfortingly, but to me, the world seemed to be going in and out of focus strangely, like I was on the verge of collapsing from shock. "I'm terribly sorry about your brother, Roxas."

I shook my head, sinking to the ground and trying to ignore my heartbeat pounding too loudly in my ears, "This can't be happening. I want… I want my twin back!"

I breathed short shaking breaths that did nothing to calm my nerves or make the tears stop building up, "How did I not know that my own twin was dead?"

I hiccuped loudly, my words tremulous from trying to hold back the tears that were threatening to fall. I bit my tongue to avoid crying and hope for a regular answer from Luxord, but the sensation of pain and blood in my mouth was like sticking my finger in a giant crack in a damn to stop the water from flowing through it and flooding the surrounding area. Luxord calmly replied, "None of you were there. You and Terra were at home, and Ventus was picking something up from the supermarket. He was hit by a car on the way back home. The man who hit him was horrified and afraid that he would be arrested for not paying attention, so he hid your brother's body, and thus, Terra was blamed for his disappearance."

"That's awful," I whispered quietly, ignoring my voice cracking, "What kind of horrible person would do that?"

There was a long pause in which I tried again to regain my composure, failing as I had before and barely managing to remain in a normal state of mind. Luxord finally spoke up, "I'm not sure who it was."

I didn't know it yet, but he was lying to me.

I begged him softly, "Please… please can we go back and save him?"

"No, I'm afraid we cannot," Luxord said calmly, "One can make small paradoxes in time, as long as they don't affect history in the long run. However, something like killing someone or bringing them back to life is much more complicated. It requires losing something."

"Please," I said quietly, "I'll give anything."

Luxord calmly replied, "Trust me, you wouldn't be able to bear the consequences of this decision."

"I'll let you do anything just bring my brother back!" I shouted at him desperately, "Please! Please, Luxord, just do this for me!"

Luxord nodded, "Certainly. But you must be willing to live with the consequences of your decision. And it may take me sometime."

He walked back over to the wall, brushing through the pictures like they were computer files. I cried then, letting all of my horror, fear, shock, and sadness roll down my face, releasing the pent up emotions from inside of me. I didn't stop until I felt Luxord gently pulling me off of the floor. I looked up at him and with his free hand he brushed away the tears on my face. His expression was unreadable, and with a deadpan voice he said, "It's done."

I asked, "What's done?"

"Your brother Ventus will return to you shortly," he replied curtly, releasing me, "You don't know how much pain you decision is going to cause."

"Why?" I asked, scared of what he was going to say.

"You Roxas, have the power to change everything, and your last decision just sealed someone's destiny," he turned away, still speaking in a dull monotone voice like he was a reanimated corpse, "When it comes to creating paradoxes, where there is death, there will always be death."

_Silence_

"I don't… I don't understand," I replied nervously.

"Oh, trust me," he said, "You will."

I shook my head, "I'm going back."

"Rest well," Luxord said calmly, "and beware, the winds of change are around the corner. The star-crossed will soon be torn apart."

I didn't know what he meant and ran away from the room. I wanted to get away from him, and away from the insanity of this place and the intense pain tugging at my heart. I felt tears still coming and streaking down my face, sparkling in the starlight behind me. I couldn't stop trying to get away from the horror and tragedy that was encroaching on my sanity. I made it to the hallway with all of our rooms in it before my legs gave out underneath me and I cried, my tears soaking the carpet.

I stayed like that, sobbing for a few more minutes until someone's strong arms lifted me up off the floor, hugging me close and letting me cry. They were silent for a few moments before whispering, "Roxas, calm down everything's going to be alright."

_Terra… _

I shook my head, and he lifted my chin up so he could smile at me and mess up my hair, repeating the same calming mantra he always said when things went wrong, "Everything's going to be alright."

"No, no it's not," I whimpered, and even though he tried to wipe the tears away then wouldn't stop cascading down my cheeks.

He sighed, "Come on, it's late, calm down and go to bed."

I whispered hoarsely, "But… you'll leave me… I don't want to lose you too."

He frowned at me, "Is this about Ven? Don't worry, we'll find him."

I softly said, "No, we won't."

"Hey, c'mon, stop being so pessimistic, Roxas," he said, obviously trying to cheer me up, "Everything's fine."

"It's not," I protested.

He groaned, "Listen, why don't the two of us get some rest? Sleep always helps me sort out my problems and makes everything a lot brighter," I stood still stubbornly refusing to comply with my brother's strong will, "I'll stay with you, if that makes you feel better."

I nodded, walking up next to him and feeling him put his arm over my shoulders comfortingly, "Whatever's wrong will get better. I'll never leave you, I promise."

_Liar…_

* * *

**(Vanitas's POV)**

I didn't like Repliku. He was my roommate and he was the most annoying jerk in the history of annoying jerks. It felt like there was no good to him whatsoever. Like right then; that night after he had his first fight with the "good guys".

I was trying to write, I wish he would have just left me alone. Repliku bragged, "And so, I just took her sword right out of my chest and healed in front of her eyes. God, the look on her face was fabulous."

I looked up at him seriously, my helmet was off, and my amber eyes glared into his replicated soul, "You didn't kill the bitch, did you?"

"No," he replied, chuckling, "it was more fun to let her just bleed out thinking of how she failed to defeat the epic immortal being that is Repliku!"

_Yeah, that's the problem with friggin' immortality. I have to put up with Repliku constantly bragging about it._

I put my pen back to the page, shaking my head, "Good. We need her, don't you forget it."

"Yeah, yeah, I won't kill anyone," he muttered, "They'll die themselves eventually anyway."

I groaned, "What the hell is it with you and immortality?"

He shrugged, looking like I had caught him off guard. No one had asked him a question like that before, and it took him a bit of time to formulate the answer, "Well, I guess it's because I like it. I was nothing before Lord Ganondorf took me in. Then he gave me immortality. Suddenly, I wasn't just an experiment anymore, I wasn't just a clone, a copy of someone I don't even know. I was different than him. I'd finally found my place in the universe where I was accepted. I know I'll be accepted here… Forever. It's comforting to a clone like me. You wouldn't understand, Vanitas. You were a real person. You had a life outside of this. I had a cage in a laboratory. Finally, I matter to someone and I mean something."

I was silent for a moment, contemplating his response, "Well, I guess, for a clone like you that would make sense. To me, a real person, immortality is a gift like you said it is, but it's also a curse. I'll keep on living on, the same age, youthful forever and I'll never die. Everyone around me who I care about, my family, my friends, will all age without me and leave me behind. Eventually they'll all die. Then I'll be left alone in the universe with nowhere to go and no one to turn to. That's my worst nightmare."

He had a look on his face like he was legitimately contemplating what I had said for once, "Well, I guess so, Vanitas… But you'll still have me, right? You'll still have us. This little makeshift army of ours, we're your family now."

There was a long moment where we met eyes with one another, and the two of us had a pure minute of understanding one another unlike anything we had before then. Then, as usual, he ruined it by speaking up, "So, what are you writing?"

I shrugged, "The story's just starting out. I don't know what I'm going to call it yet."

He settled down in his bed, looking at the clock for once, "Ay! It's nearly midnight… We have no time management skills," he flicked off the right, "See you tomorrow."

I was annoyed with him for shutting the lights when I was writing, but suddenly I had a burst of inspiration from something he said.

My story had a name.

* * *

**End chapter 6**

** Okay, I owe all of you huge apologies for how long it takes me to write these chapters, but I make them very long and try to knock out huge chuncks of the story in each one. So, now we've experienced our first of several little characters deaths, and the triforce of courage is 2/3s complete. I feel pretty accomplished. :) **

** Just so you know, I haven't and will not give up on this story. I just have hardly any time to write it and edit it. I'm working at a pace of about 3 or 4 paragraphs a day written on the bus ride home, sadly, and that goes for everything. Plus, most of my creative writing skills are going into English right now, so expect a wait. However, around the middle of April I should be getting more free time, so I ****_might_**** be able to get a little bit more frequent with updates. I'm really sorry about that.**

** Thank you all for reading. As usual, feel free to leave a review, but please don't flame me.**

**Peace!**

**-Pikachu203**


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